According to the Village Voice:
Saturday, Anthony Weiner joined 18 Senators who sent an open letter to the FDA this week demanding that the "medically and scientifically unwarranted" lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men be done away with.
Weiner said that overturning the ban, which was put in place in 1983, would save lives in the face of a dangerously low local blood supply. According to the New York Blood Center, 1,500 expected donations of blood and platelets were lost when the recent snowstorms forced the cancellation of school and workplace blood drives.
The Senators who wrote to the FDA pointed out that the lifetime ban on donations from men who have had a single same-sex partner since 1977 is not supported by the currently available science.
The American Red Cross, America's Blood Centers, and AABB reported before an FDA-sponsored workshop on March 9, 2006 that the ban on men who have had sex with other men (MSM), even once, since 1977 from ever donating blood "is medically and scientifically unwarranted." Then in 2008, the Council on Science and Public Health at the American Medical Association also advocated modifying the lifetime deferral requirement for MSM...
Collecting facilities now screen all donors for history of certain high-risk behaviors, and FDA regulations determine that all donated blood be analyzed by two highly accurate screening tests; one for antibodies to HIV-1/2 and HIV-1 Group O variants, and the other for the actual sequences of the virus using molecular technologies. As a result, the blood banking community believes that the lifetime deferral is no longer necessary to protect the integrity of the blood banks.
The letter was also signed by Democrats Dick Durbin, Daniel Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, Russ Feingold, Mark Udall, Al Franken, Maria Cantwell, Carl Levin, Tom Harkin, Mark Begich, Rolland Burris, and Michael Bennet, as well as Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
Midland School Board Member Clint McCance told Anderson Cooper that he is resigning from the school board following a firestorm of outrage... -
A FIRST, 2 men basking in the afterglow! 14 years ago today was the First Gay Sex scene on Daytime and I believe on Broadcast Televisi... -
A huge victory in Oklahoma this week, with yet another marriage ban declared unconstitutional. Now comes the appeal, in the same federal cir...
-
GLOBAL AFFAIR: Iran Fumes Over Argo's Oscar Win! F-BOMB: Jennifer Lawrence Reveals What She Was Thinking When She Fell on the Sta... -
by MK Scott Now that Oscars are over, I could now say that the Oscars had its Moments with Bond and Bassey with Adele and Babs. I Love... -
Get my album 'Home': http://dft.ba/-JBsHome (physical) http://j.mp/HomeTunes (iTunes) Listen on Spotify: http://spoti.fi/JBsHo...
-
The Bears race to Chunk Studios in an effort to rescue Todd (Ian Parks) who may have fallen into the clutches of a psychotic mad man. Ne... -
T he Star Wars Holiday Special is a 1978 American television special set in the Star Wars galaxy. It was one of the first official Star ... -
Former Navy Capt. Owen Honors' homophobic videos raise a big question in the wake of the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, write... -
Kitt's method (in 2004) of seducing young men: Champagne! By MK Scott Since it is Christmas, I remember 2 of the greatest Legends ...
OUTview TV
Creative Commons License
OutView Online by MK Scott is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.outviewonline.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.outviewonline.com/p/contact-us.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment