“It’s been a very long struggle to try to get them to just simply adapt and include the current science in the policy,” said Scott Schoettes, counsel and HIV project director at Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization. In 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed its guidance but still required men to abstain from sex with another man for at least a year before they could give blood, a policy that the the American Public Health Association said was “not based in science”. Gay and bisexual men in the US had been subject to blanket bans on donating blood since Aids devastated the LGBTQ+ community in the 1980s, because of what health experts have called “ discriminatory practices based on outdated stereotypes”.
“I was just so angry and so embarrassed at the way that that was handled, and I just didn’t see it coming,” he said.
He finally attended an appointment last week, but as soon as a worker there learned he was gay, her face turned cold.
