"We will definitely get the petition ready for the next blood drive," Chan said in an e-mail to The Dartmouth. The campus' next blood drive is scheduled to take place in August.
Men who have had intercourse with other men since 1977 are not allowed to donate blood because they are 60 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population and 800 times more likely to have the virus than other first-time donors, according to the FDA website. There is an approximate failure rate of one in two million in testing blood for HIV because there is a window period during which the virus cannot be detected.
According to the FDA, scientific studies have found that if these men were allowed to donate, "there would be a small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions." Men who have sex with other men are also more likely to have Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and Human Herpes Virus, according to the FDA.
The policy of disallowing men who have had sex with other men to donate has existed since 1983, and the FDA's current policy was finalized in 1992. Other people that are not allowed to donate blood include intravenous drug users and those who have had sex for money or drugs because they are also more likely to be infected with a blood-borne illness, according to the FDA. There are also restrictions for those who have recently traveled to or lived in malaria regions and those with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a fatal brain disease.
