Sunday, February 03, 2008
Blood Donor Madness
The national CMDA called me to do an interview about this article. Seems the president of San Jose State University has suspended all blood donor drives on campus. Why, you ask? Because the FDA regulations discriminate against gay men and the college has a nondiscrimination policy.
I'm a pathologist and we oversee blood banks and donor centers. We nearly always have a blood shortage in this country that puts surgical patients, cancer patients, and victims of trauma at risk. Back in the 70's the FDA put in a restriction on donations from gay men, or "men who have sex with men (MSM)". What an interesting coincidence that MSM is also "Main Stream Media", someone wasn't thinking!
The restrictions were based on observations that gay men had a higher statistical risk of having hepatitis which at that time was a big problem with transfusions. The advent of the HIV epidemic certainly did not give any reason to change the regulations.
FDA has a lot of restrictions on donors. IV drugs, taking or giving money for sex, travel to Malaria zones, having lived in Europe for five years (mad cow, don't you know), any contact with a hepatitis patient, tatoos, transplants, prior transfusions, prior receipt of clotting factor concentrates, all join men having sex with men as deferrals of donations for various periods of time. All of these have rational justifications based on risk, in a society that does not consider any risk acceptable.
Blood brothers. Blood is thicker than water. Washed in the blood. Blood sacrifice. Life-blood. Our very language shows the emotional impact of blood. Many more die from medication errors than transfusion problems, but I had to go on national news to explain why one patient died of an ABO mismatch at one of my hospitals. (It was a clerical error by a nurse in a hurry.)
Are all the FDA's regulations totally rational? Please. It's a Federal agency! Of course in light of the amazing recent advances in infectious disease testing for HIV and Hepatitis, it is possible that some of the restrictions need to be updated. It is a scientific and medical question, NOT a political one.
Back to San Jose State. They claim to have talked to AIDS experts, blood bankers, etc. before making their "momentous" decision. Apparently not looking like they might be discriminating is more important than helping the sick and hurt in their community. Those people, of course, will weaken and die silently in ICU's and ER's and this guy won't ever know that his feel-good policy caused their suffering. Is it arrogant of me to think that his judgement day could be, uh, real bad?
I'm a pathologist and we oversee blood banks and donor centers. We nearly always have a blood shortage in this country that puts surgical patients, cancer patients, and victims of trauma at risk. Back in the 70's the FDA put in a restriction on donations from gay men, or "men who have sex with men (MSM)". What an interesting coincidence that MSM is also "Main Stream Media", someone wasn't thinking!
The restrictions were based on observations that gay men had a higher statistical risk of having hepatitis which at that time was a big problem with transfusions. The advent of the HIV epidemic certainly did not give any reason to change the regulations.
FDA has a lot of restrictions on donors. IV drugs, taking or giving money for sex, travel to Malaria zones, having lived in Europe for five years (mad cow, don't you know), any contact with a hepatitis patient, tatoos, transplants, prior transfusions, prior receipt of clotting factor concentrates, all join men having sex with men as deferrals of donations for various periods of time. All of these have rational justifications based on risk, in a society that does not consider any risk acceptable.
Blood brothers. Blood is thicker than water. Washed in the blood. Blood sacrifice. Life-blood. Our very language shows the emotional impact of blood. Many more die from medication errors than transfusion problems, but I had to go on national news to explain why one patient died of an ABO mismatch at one of my hospitals. (It was a clerical error by a nurse in a hurry.)
Are all the FDA's regulations totally rational? Please. It's a Federal agency! Of course in light of the amazing recent advances in infectious disease testing for HIV and Hepatitis, it is possible that some of the restrictions need to be updated. It is a scientific and medical question, NOT a political one.
Back to San Jose State. They claim to have talked to AIDS experts, blood bankers, etc. before making their "momentous" decision. Apparently not looking like they might be discriminating is more important than helping the sick and hurt in their community. Those people, of course, will weaken and die silently in ICU's and ER's and this guy won't ever know that his feel-good policy caused their suffering. Is it arrogant of me to think that his judgement day could be, uh, real bad?
