http://www.ucfnews.com/news/546230.html

Last Wednesday, a sorority member passed out fliers and urged passers-by to donate blood in front of the Student Union. As part of the Central Florida Blood Bank's partnership with UCF, a program dubbed "Generation Donation," she persuaded bystanders to give by assuring them their blood would go toward helping sick patients on their deathbeds. Scanning the crowd, she turned her head quickly to implore a young man walking in her direction to help in this cause.

"I can't, I'm gay," he mumbled, before smiling politely and shambling away.

"Oh, right," the sorority member replied, somberly realizing why the man could not participate.

Amid a nationwide blood shortage, blood banks all across the country are stepping up their efforts to recruit eligible donors. One faction, however, has not been invited to do so. Since 1983, gay men, have been denied the chance to help alleviate America's blood crisis.

The Central Florida Blood Bank, like the majority of the nation's blood banks, report having only a one-day supply of healthy blood on hand, which falls dangerously short of the five-to-seven day supply hospitals currently require to satisfy the needs of patients. Tens of thousands of trauma victims depend on life-saving transfusions daily, but of the 60 percent of Americans who are eligible to donate, only 5 percent find the time.

Homosexual men have the potential to boost donation totals dramatically. Studies show the addition of gay men to the blood pool would increase the number of units in the U.S. blood supply from one to two units, out of the 14 million donated each year.

The rigorous process of laboratory inspections a pint of blood goes through includes 14 tests, 11 for infectious diseases, such as West Nile virus, hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. These safeguards ensure that odds of a blood recipient receiving HIV through transfusion is about 1 in 2 million. With new medical breakthroughs in the testing of blood for diseases being made every year, members of the gay community are questioning why, 20 years after HIV/AIDS first made its appearance in the homosexual community, gay men's helping hands are still being slapped away.

Austin Rogers, a volunteer at the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Community Center in Orlando, says he hears about these injustices every day.

"The gay community is quite upset about most FDA policies regarding those with alternative sexual orientations. The [rejection of gay blood] is yet another circumstance that makes gay men feel more alienated in our society," he said.

The rate of new AIDS cases among heterosexual Latino males is almost four times the rate of that among gay men, a fact that would seem to contradict the foundation of the FDA's policy, reports The Kaiser Foundation, a non-profit organization that gives educational briefings on Capitol Hill.

"Factually, the rate of AIDS incidents among gay males is nearly the same, if not less, of that of heterosexual males. Promiscuous heterosexuals can get their blood screened; gay men don't get that far," said Carly Usdin, president of UCF's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Student Union.

If they choose to stay quiet about their sexuality, gay men do have the ability to get that far. Some gay men, such as Joseph Anzalone, vice president of the GLBSU, would not be comfortable hiding the truth.

"I've known more people who have gone to give blood and lied than I do people who have been rejected. They go in there and say, 'Yeah, I'm straight,' just so they could give blood. I've never done that. I personally wouldn't lie with something like that," Anzalone said.

Others in the gay community see falsifying information as a means to an end.

"I see no problem with keeping your sexuality a secret in order to do a good deed and besides, no responsible gay male would attempt to give blood if he thought there was a chance that he might have HIV," Rogers said.

In the coming years, experts and those who work closely with blood banks feel that the last hurdle will be jumped.

An FDA source said due to progresses in disease testing, "at some point they won't care who you are or where you're from."


This is ridiculous! If we need blood so bad, why reject homosexuals simply because they are, homosexuals? They are people just like anyone else, and they have blood that can be donated.