A few weeks ago, Dartmouth held its quarterly Red Cross blood drive, attracting many to donate their time and a lifeline to those in need. Such blood drives comes at a particularly salient time for the United States, as the supply of blood available in blood banks across the country is dangerously low. In 2006, Red Cross president Bernadine Healy called the situation "one of the worst shortages that the Red Cross has seen," with the lack of available blood causing elective surgeries in certain Californian hospitals to be canceled. Seven years later, the situation, though less dire, still requires improvement. In June, the Red Cross found a 10 percent decrease in blood donations nationwide, representing a drop of 50,000 donors from May.
The summer months generally present blood donation shortages for the Red Cross, largely because schools are not in session and students comprise a key donor population. Dartmouth is unique in its insistence upon a summer term for sophomores and therefore has the potential to play a key role in contributing to the Red Cross, and it does. Students seem eager to help the cause, and during the blood drive, blue armbands seemed to be ubiquitous badges of honor.
But the Red Cross did not fully use Dartmouth's potential. In 1983, the Food and Drug Administration established a policy that is as outdated and homophobic as it is absurd and damaging. The law states that men who have had sex with another man since 1977 are ineligible to donate blood, despite the rigorous screening all blood undergoes. Gay and bisexual men are entirely excluded from the pool of eligible donors and are effectively branded as a contaminated group, unfit to save the lives of those in need.
At one time, such FDA precautions were grounded in some form of legitimacy. At the peak of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, gay men were 60 times more likely to be HIV positive, and there were no tests to determine whether the virus was present in a blood supply. This led to the severe and tragic death of several blood transfusion recipients who contracted HIV from a tainted source. But today, three decades later, innovations and improvements in science have led to highly effective tests and screenings that should have rendered the old rule a relic. The FDA itself has shown that these new tests are so dependable that only one in every two million units of blood in the U.S. is at risk for HIV. In spite of such statistics, the FDA has refused to innovate and change its policy.
"Love is love" has served as a mantra for many proponents of gay rights, and in particular, gay marriage. In this situation, "blood is blood" becomes a sadly poignant parallel. No longer are men who have engaged in sexual activity with other men an unknown threat to the safety of blood loss victims, and it is outstandingly narrow-minded to maintain a target on a specific group for a specific action, especially because of the massive advances that have rendered risk nearly obsolete. Gay men can, of course, get around the ban by denying their sexual orientation, but forcing people to lie about their sexuality in order to help others is unbelievably backward.
We are privileged to have individuals who are willing to give blood blindly without expecting anything in return and without knowledge or proof of its use. Giving blood should not be a heterosexual privilege. There is something particularly magnanimous about donating blood the willingness of men and women to give is a tangible manifestation of the goodness of the human heart and the selflessness of the human spirit, and it is one that transcends sexual preferences. Risky sexual behavior is not synonymous with gay sex and while the FDA refuses blood from gay donors, there is no explicit category for those who have had sex with prostitutes or with a high number of partners that can be similarly used as a marker for discrimination. The Red Cross and America's Blood Centers, the two major blood banks, are both in favor of eliminating the ban and were joined on June 20 by the American Medical Association. Colleges across the country have taken the initiative to draft and distribute "We the People" petitions with the purpose of pressuring the FDA to lift the prohibitory ban. Change.org sponsors a similar petition, and yet has only a measly 51 signatures. It is time for Dartmouth to join the discussion and aid in the destruction of this injustice.