But no screening method or more probing set of questions has been proved better at spotting higher-risk donors, Dr. In the United States, donors answer a list of routine questions posed by a computer or a “blood technician” who often has little training. In Italy, screening is done by doctors trained to spot risky donors. In South Africa, many heterosexuals are infected, so blood-collection agencies try to assess risks by asking, for example, how many sexual partners a potential donor has had. epidemics and blood-collecting practices differ in important ways from those in the United States. Other countries try to assess donors’ risks individually, but their H.I.V. It is based, he explained, both on how the disease circulates in this country and on how donors here are screened. Marks, the deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the 12-month period was “supported by the best available research” and was similar to deferral periods imposed in Britain and Australia. is much more common among gay men, so the perception that they have a higher inherent risk was used to justify the lifetime ban and now underlies the continuation of a 12-month deferral period. The “window period” - during which a unit of donated blood might test negative but still infect the recipient - is the reason for continuing time-based bans on people who engage in various kinds of high-risk behavior.īoth men and women have sex with strangers who might be infected, of course, but H.I.V. Now, however, tests can tell whether donated blood contains the virus in as little as nine days after the donor has been infected. was discovered that year, and no way to test for it in donations existed. The virus that would become known as H.I.V. The Food and Drug Administration enacted the lifetime ban in 1983, early in the AIDS epidemic.
Kelsey Louie, the group’s chief executive officer, said it “ignores the modern science of H.I.V.-testing technology while perpetuating the stereotype that all gay and bisexual men are inherently dangerous.” GMHC, the advocacy group formerly known as Gay Men’s Health Crisis, harshly criticized the 12-month delay.