FDA Changes Restriction On MSM Blood Donations
Until this month, the official FDA guidelines for who should be deferred when trying to donate blood instructed healthcare providers to defer any man who had had sexual contact with another man in the past 12 months (in the healthcare industry, the acronym “MSM“ is used as shorthand for “men who have sex with men”).
The FDA has now changed the MSM deferral from 12 months to 3 months in an effort to increase the supply of blood during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is this a positive change? Yes. But it feels as if this change only coming about because a few powerful, bigoted people realized that this pandemic is really leaving them up the creek without a paddle. They need help (to save lives, but also to save their reputations), so they’re turning to a group they had illogically deferred in bad faith.
Of course, men who have sex with men have always been able to lie and donate blood anyway, but that isn’t the point. The point is that these guidelines are archaic, discriminatory, scientifically unfounded, and stigmatizing, and simply reducing the timeline that determines who should be deferred doesn’t make it better when the underlying reason for the deferral remains the same.
If you are a same sex attracted man (whether you identify as gay, bisexual, or otherwise), I encourage you not to donate blood as a matter of principle — regardless of whether you’ve had sex in the last three months, the past year, the past hour, or ever in your life — until these absurd guidelines are completely done away with. If the people making these rules want our help, they should have to earn it.