Gay bloods

Those taking medications to treat or prevent HIV infection will also be deferred. This is absolutely the first step to take, and science is going to keep working with us and it's only going to go up from here.'"

Experts said this new policy focuses on individual risk, taking into account that many donors are monogamous, test HIV negative and practice safe sex.

"I think that the individual risk-based assessment now gives us a chance to step away from sort of blanket decisions around the risks related to donation," Miyashita Ochoa said.

In 2020, this was shortened to a period of 90 days of abstinence.

Scientists and advocates argued that not having policies that backed science was discriminating.

"I think it's safe to say that the policy was so incredibly blunt," Miyashita Ochoa said. "I just felt like I was finally able to do my part and it's a small thing to do that can make such a big difference."

The new policy is one that public health experts and gay rights activists said had been a long time coming.

Ban on gay and bisexual men donating

In the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, blood donations were not able to screen for HIV, which led to some cases of HIV via transfusion.

Although donations are typically low this time of year because of late summer vacations, experts say the problem is particularly acute because the work-from-home movement has made office blood drives less effective.

Adding gay and bisexual men to the donor pool is likely to increase the blood supply by about 4%, Ehrenfeld said. With each donation having the potential to save three lives, that increase works out to an extra 544,000 units on top of the typical yearly supply of 13.6 million units collected or potentially more than 1.6 million lives saved.

Ehrenfeld, an anesthesiologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin who uses blood products for his patients every day, said it was particularly tough for him to be prohibited from donating when his own son was born prematurely at 29 weeks.

"You always rely on the kindness of strangers," Ehrenfeld said, noting that blood donations can't be directed to a particular patient.

Instead of asking about sexual orientation, the Red Cross now asks any would-be donor to wait three months after having had anal sex with a new or multiple sexual partners.

Dr. Giving something that benefits someone else and that her own body can regenerate naturally helps her regain a sense of control after particularly stressful times at work.

"It was a startling moment in that dark fellows room to think of how insensitive I had been to the fact that Robbie couldn't give," said Walensky, who spent much of her career focused on HIV before recently completing a two-year stint as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She made him a promise that they would donate blood together some day.

It took eight years to make good on that promise, which finally happened two weeks ago.

The slow pace of policy change

The two, along with a colleague, Dr.

Chana Sacks, co-authored a paper in 2016 in the New England Journal of Medicine to raise awareness about the problem.

But it took until Walensky was in federal office, with Goldstein as a key deputy, for them to help push through a regulatory change.

The policy had been profoundly unfair, they and others said, because it singled out gay and bisexual men while ignoring straight men who might be at equal or higher risk for carrying HIV.

On May 11, the Food and Drug Administration officially changed its policy allowing gay and bisexual men to donate blood as long as they have been monogamous for the previous three months.

On Aug.

7, the Red Cross announced it had changed its screening questionnaire, removing questions designed to single out men who have sex with men. Those who have had a new sexual partner or multiple partners in the past three months and a history of anal sex during that time period will be deferred. On Sept. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

How new FDA rule allowing gay, bisexual men to give blood is making donation more inclusive

For at least a decade, Chris Van Bibber had been prevented from donating blood.

The 35-year-old from Salt Lake City, Utah -- who is openly gay -- was restricted due to rules set in place by the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that did not allow sexually active gay men from donating.

However, this past May, the FDA dropped all restrictions specific to gay and bisexual men donating blood, moving to a new blood donation risk assessment tool that is the same for every donor regardless of how they identify, which rolled out in August.

This meant that Van Bibber was able to make history as he donated blood at the American Red Cross Blood Donation Center in his home city.

"To sit back in that chair and to go through the questionnaire beforehand, and it was just -- I felt so much excitement and so much relief that we were finally here," Van Bibber told ABC News.

We can all do our part," she added.

ABC News' Sony Salzman contributed to this report.

Blood Donation by Gay and Bisexual Men

Blood donors give a gift for which there is no substitute. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, had entered the blood supply and was passing to people who received transfusions.

The fear of HIV, then a certain death sentence, also affected public policy.

By 2005, the science had been transformed. The new blood donation risk assessment is the same for every donor regardless of how they identify.

It follows several other Western countries that have recently dropped bans or eased restrictions including the United Kingdom, France, Greece and the Netherlands.

Van Bibber said when he first heard the FDA was considering making the policy change, he was initially wary, but he was excited when it was made official.

"I was a little leery just because I wanted to know, how are they going to make that change and is it truly going to be inclusive and how are they going to involve everybody?" he said.

"And it was so group-based, identity-based specifically, that it was a tool for furthering stigma and discrimination."

'It felt very invasive'

For Van Bibber, the desire to donate blood is partly due to family history. And this is about an opportunity to participate in a more just in a more right scientific assessment of risk.

AABB will continue to update this page as new information becomes available.

But people with such undetectable viral levels are unable to transmit the virus anyway.

"You don't need to exclude people based on behavior when you have a diagnostic test that obviates those questions," he said.

The impact of the change

The Red Cross' blood supply nationally has fallen by about 25% since early August, with distribution of blood products outpacing donations, according to the Red Cross website.

"But to be pulled out (of donating) was a really, really difficult thing to grapple as we were watching our son."

American Red Cross: National blood shortage due to climate disasters, low donor turnout

Goldstein also writes regular requests for units of red blood cells or platelets.

"Every time I do it, I realize it's a precious resource and it's giving them life, and it's something I couldn't partake in before," he said on a recent Zoom call with Walensky.

The policy shift, he said, gave him a profound psychological boost.

"For my entire adult life, I'd been told by government that my blood wasn't clean, that my blood wasn't worthy."

Donating, he said, was "a really amazing moment."

Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare.

This led to the FDA instituting a lifetime ban on gay and bisexual men from donating blood as well as women who have sex with men who have sex with men.
"That was really based not on an individual person's risk, but more so on belonging to a particular group and some of that, at the initial onset, you could say was based on what we were seeing with regard to the impact of HIV on specific communities, namely, gay and bisexual men," Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, an adjunct professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, told ABC News.
"We quickly got to a place where we were able to test all blood donations universally for HIV.

That policy became outdated…and yet we did not see a change in the policies related to this permanent ban or permanent deferral," she continued.
In 2015, the blanket ban was repealed but the FDA placed restrictions that men who have sex with men could donate if they were abstinent from sex for at least one year. One way to make blood donation even more inclusive would be to expand eligibility to those on a medication called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, which is a daily pill containing two medications that prevent HIV-negative patients from being infected, they said.
"While we definitely don't want any donors to stop taking their medication because it's important for HIV prevention and treatment, but more data is needed to understand how these medications impact testing and eligibility," Dr.

Baia Lasky, a divisional chief medical officer with the American Red Cross, told ABC News.
Miyashita Ochoa said she hopes the risk assessment convinces more people not only to reduce stigma but encourage more people to donate.
"These questionnaires are intended to keep our blood supply safe and so while you may feel some discomfort being asked about your sexual health risks, we have to maintain the safety of our blood supply," she said.
"So please support this effort to move towards this individual risk-based assessment and understand that beyond just addressing stigma and discrimination, this is about education.

At AABB, we believe that the ability to save lives through donation of safe blood products should be open to as many people as possible, irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity.