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Pathologist Dr. Benjamin Mazer talks in regards to the altering FDA guidelines on donating blood for males who’ve intercourse with males.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
For many years, the Food and Drug Administration barred males who’ve intercourse with different males from donating blood. It was a coverage thought-about discriminatory by the LGBTQ neighborhood and different critics. And this week, the FDA introduced it will change its necessities. Instead of broadly excluding homosexual and bisexual individuals from donating blood, the company has moved to a extra focused questionnaire about a person’s sexual historical past. But some advocates say that does not go far sufficient to advance fairness, and people advocates embrace pathologist Dr. Benjamin Mazer. Dr. Mazer, welcome to this system.
BENJAMIN MAZER: Thank you a lot for having me.
PFEIFFER: The FDA has been loosening its blood donation restrictions incrementally over the past decade. Could you summarize what has modified over time?
MAZER: Sure. For a very long time, when you’d been a sexually lively homosexual or bisexual man just about ever, you had been banned for all times from donating blood, which was thought-about extraordinarily discriminatory and nonscientific. And then a number of years in the past, they modified such that you just could not have been sexually lively for the final yr. And then through the pandemic amid blood shortages, they modified it to a ban of three months of sexual exercise. And now it is based mostly on whether or not you’ve got had a number of companions, new companions and, particularly, anal intercourse not too long ago.
PFEIFFER: Does this new requirement appear truthful to you?
MAZER: It’s completely a step in the proper course. I do need to applaud the FDA and advocacy teams for doing that. But no, it would not go far sufficient. And the intent remains to be to exclude non-monogamous homosexual and bisexual males. That remains to be the intent. They’re attempting to select these increased danger individuals and exclude them from the blood provide. And these donor questionnaires are a really crude instrument for holding the blood provide protected, and it is not the principle means we maintain the blood provide protected. The means we maintain the blood provide protected is by testing each single blood pattern for a wide range of communicable illnesses together with HIV. And these are extremely correct checks that may catch all however the latest infections.
PFEIFFER: And then the message must be – belief the science. Trust the expertise. We will display screen out contaminated blood.
MAZER: Absolutely. It’s nice expertise. It’s carried out universally within the U.S., and there hasn’t been a transfusion-associated an infection in – 2008 was the latest one. It was a single contaminated donation…
PFEIFFER: Oh, actually? 2008 – it has been greater than a decade.
MAZER: Yes. And it is tens of thousands and thousands of blood transfusions yearly. And so out of – the dangers of HIV are simply minuscule, minuscule.
PFEIFFER: Do you suppose this rule change will immediate many individuals who was excluded from donating blood from now eager to donate?
MAZER: There can be extra individuals donating blood from the homosexual and bisexual neighborhood. I’m completely happy about that. However, now, you already know, they particularly need to know what number of companions you are having, how not too long ago, what forms of intercourse you are having. Straight or homosexual, not everybody’s comfy giving this info to strangers, to a medical group, and in order that’s additionally going to discourage individuals from donating.
PFEIFFER: If that is the case, what do you suppose the FDA ought to do to look like as open and welcoming as attainable?
MAZER: I acknowledge that the FDA is a conservative group hoping to forestall even a single inadvertent transmission of an infectious illness. And so I believe realistically, what they may do is introduce a science-based coverage that makes use of the precise laboratory window interval of the check – that means if an an infection was acquired within the final week or two. And so having some type of questionnaire saying when you’ve had a brand new companion within the final two weeks, that could be an inexpensive science-based deferral fairly than the brand new three-month coverage which is not based mostly on our laboratory testing. More idealistically, you would possibly say eliminate all of those questions – that we’re testing each single blood pattern, and so the blood provide will stay protected even when you do not ask them. I simply do not suppose the FDA is courageous sufficient to do this, to be trustworthy.
PFEIFFER: That’s Baltimore-based pathologist Dr. Benjamin Mazer. Thank you very a lot.
MAZER: Thank you once more.
PFEIFFER: We requested the FDA to answer a few of Mazer’s criticisms. In an announcement to NPR, the company mentioned its present particular person risk-based questionnaire steerage will, quote, “keep the present excessive stage of security of blood.” The FDA famous that false damaging HIV checks are uncommon however nonetheless attainable if the donor remains to be in a really early stage of an infection. The FDA additionally mentioned, quote, “the strategy to this work has at all times been and can proceed to be based mostly on the most effective accessible science.”
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