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“So I said ‘Let’s work with the Red Cross, hold a blood drive, and call attention to this issue.'” “Ending discriminatory blood donation policies is something I’ve been engaged in for many years. “As soon as I saw that the call for social distancing was affecting blood donations, I knew we wanted to increase the supply of blood, while also reminding people that a segment of the population is irrationally prohibited from giving,” says Wiener. Review: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness And yet you could be a sexually active, non-monogamous straight person, and none of this would apply to you.” “It’s just tragic that the FDA, which is supposedly a scientific organization, is ignoring the science on blood donation. It’s simply based on outdated stereotypes, and frankly, animus towards gay and bi men, assuming we’re all disease vectors, we’re all filthy, that gay sex is dirty,” Wiener says. “There’s no conceivable, rational explanation for that rule. Given that, why would you require even three months of celibacy when the resting window is 10 to 14 days? So unless that person seroconverted within a week-and-a-half to two weeks before giving, the test will screen that blood out. “We know that every blood donation is tested for HIV and the RNA test for HIV has a mere 10-to-14-day window. “And none of it is based in science, none of it is rational, and it’s all completely discriminatory. “Yes, one year of celibacy is less terrible than a lifetime ban, and three months of celibacy is less terrible than a year, but it’s all terrible,” he says. Miss Richfield On Her Lips, Her Musical Saw, And Why 1981 Last week, the FDA again revised its policy on blood donations, reducing the deferral period to three months. Food and Drug Administration move from permanently banning all men who have sex with men to, in 2015, allowing gay and bisexual men to donate 12 months after their last sexual encounter. Now, almost 33 years later, the Democratic state senator from California who represents San Francisco, has seen the U.S. It was a very scary time to come to grips that I was gay.” “There was no effective treatment for HIV,” he says. Wiener came of age as a gay man in 1987, when he was 17, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It was really demoralizing, and made me feel like a second-class citizen.” I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach, that I was permanently banned from donating blood for the rest of my life. “The questionnaire said if you’d had sex with a man since 1977, you couldn’t donate. “I remember the first time I went to donate blood as an adult, in the late ’80s,” says Scott Wiener.