Blood Drive Policy Called Homophobic

A provocative postering campaign by the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) has reignited campus debate over a Red Cross policy that excludes sexually active gay men from donating blood.

With the Harvard blood drive ongoing this week, BGLTSA members posted fliers throughout campus that resembled official Red Cross blood drive advertisements with the words “Gay Men Need Not Apply” stamped across them.

And the Harvard Blood Drive has joined BGLTSA in calling for the Red Cross to change its regulations. The two groups will meet this weekend to discuss possible strategies.

“It is a homophobic policy that needs to be changed,” said Neilesh Mutyala ’04, a blood drive coordinator.

The policy they are protesting—mandated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—prevents men who have since 1977 engaged in sexual activity with men from donating their blood.

A FDA scientific advisory panel voted by a seven-to-six margin in September 2000 to maintain that regulation.

While Red Cross officials said the policy is currently necessary to lower the risks associated with blood transfusions, they said they are working on technological advances that could make these restrictions unnecessary in the near future.

“All of us in the blood community would like to change what we’re doing so that we’re not deferring so many donors,” said Richard J. Benjamin, chief medical officer of the New England Red Cross.

Benjamin said he is concerned that the posters have deterred potential donors from giving blood.

“[Blood donors] look at this and say, ‘We’re not gonna give blood!’ It’s so difficult to get people to come through the door in the first place—this kind of publicity is damaging our ability to give blood to our patients,” said Benjamin, who is also an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.

But Michael B. Murphy ’03, co-chair of BGLTSA, said the goal of the protest was not to dissuade people from giving blood.

According to Mutyala, the Harvard Blood Drive has seen a decline in turnout this year. But Mutyala said this decline is likely unrelated to BGLTSA’s postering efforts.

Some students said they were confused by the posters, misinterpreting them as official Red Cross advertisements.

Murphy said the misconception was the result of a simple mistake—the initial run of posters did say they were made by the BGLTSA.

But Murphy said the mistake had unintended benefits.

“It made people talk about it,” he said. “In a sense that’s a good discussion to get going.”

Discussion of the Red Cross’ policies toward gay males also came to Harvard last year when then-BOND leader Clifford S. Davidson ’02 sent a message to that group’s e-mail list encouraging people to lie about their sexual practices in order to be able to donate in the wake of Sept. 11.

That message led to several angry replies on the list and was also denounced nationally by several conservative organizations.

Benjamin said, however, that while the Red Cross would like to open up its blood donations, doing so would not be a responsible move. He cited higher transmission rates of HIV among gay men as the rationale behind the FDA policy.

But Murphy said he objects to that logic.

“We don’t feel that the reasoning the Red Cross uses is grounded in statistics or rigorously consistently applied,” he said.

While this week’s protests are unlikely to affect regulations, Benjamin said the Red Cross is working to lower risks of contracting disease through blood transfusions—which could, eventually, mean a policy change.

“It’s my hope that within the next five years we will be able to go to the FDA and say, ‘Do these deferrals really make sense?’”

To that end, the Red Cross is looking to adopt new medical technologies, Benjamin said. One advance would inactivate pathogens in blood, killing “million-folds of HIV and other infections,” Benjamin said.

Another technology would improve the specificity of the Nucleic Acid Test, the most sensitive test for HIV, he said.

“When we get to that point when we have the technology that allows us to change, we will change. We want to change—we want those people back,” he said.