The News
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it had formally ended the agency’s wide-ranging prohibition on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, a longstanding policy that had been denounced as discriminatory.
Instead, the F.D.A. is finalizing guidance that includes a questionnaire for all donors that is aimed at learning about their recent sexual activity. The more targeted questions will focus on whether someone has had new or multiple sex partners and anal sex in the last three months.
Potential donors who had recent sex with new or multiple partners and anal sex under those screening criteria would still be turned away.
The revised policy would also preclude blood donations from people taking oral PrEP to prevent H.I.V. infection, a restriction the agency said was designed to avoid false-negative results during blood screening.
In the revised policy the F.D.A. took its cues from Canada and the United Kingdom, which adopted similar approaches. The U.S….
This article was written by Christina Jewett and originally published on www.nytimes.com