Battle Over the Blood — FDA Upholds Ban on Homosexual Male Blood Donations

“In this battle, if the gays win, you lose,” says Kincaid

[NOTE: Corrected contact info for American Red Cross below]

“Detection of HIV infection is particularly challenging when very low levels of virus are present in the blood for example during the so-called ‘window period.’ The ‘window period’ is the time between being infected with HIV and the ability of an HIV test to detect HIV in an infected person….FDA’s MSM policy reduces the likelihood that a person would unknowingly donate blood during the ‘window period’ of infection. This is important because the rate of new infections in MSM is higher than in the general population and current blood donors.” — Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

In the book And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, homosexual journalist Randy Shilts documents how homosexual activists originally fought the effort to ban "gay" male blood donations, saying it was discriminatory. This caused a delay in starting the ban, which led to the needless deaths of many innocent people. Shilts himself died of AIDS.

Folks, thankfully, sanity has prevailed and the political attempt to weaken the FDA ban on blood donations from “men who have had sex with men” (MSM) failed in a 6-9 vote Friday by the FDA committee mentioned in Cliff Kincaid’s article below. (Note the American Red Cross’ condemnation of the vote, along with “gay” activist organizations; contact the Red Cross HERE.) I only wish the homosexual activists and their liberal allies (most importantly the CDC) would redirect their energies toward shutting down homosexual bathhouses and sex clubs — i.e., the venues that encourage the anonymous hyper-promiscuity that facilitates the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. (See our story: “CDC: Gay Men’s HIV Rate 44 Times that of Other Men; Syphilis Rate 46 Times Higher.”) But this would run contrary to the history of homosexual activism, which elevates deviant sex and “rights” based on same above the public health and other interests of the public. TAKE ACTION: Contact the Food and Drug Administration HERE; Contact the Red Cross HERE; and you can reach Congress at 202-224-3121. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org,

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The Battle Over Blood

By Cliff Kincaid, Reprinted with permission of Accuracy in Media, www.aim.org |  June 9, 2010

With the public focused on the calamity of the Gulf oil spill, another disaster that could affect millions of lives is in the making. The federal Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (ACBSA) is holding meetings on June 10 and June 11 to consider lifting the ban on gay blood.

In this battle, if the gays win, you lose.

Gay activists, who are expected to dominate the proceedings and intimidate federal policy makers, insist that the ban is discriminatory and homophobic and are demanding the “right” to donate blood. The lifting of the ban on gay blood is seen as a necessary prerequisite to lifting the ban on open gays in the military. After all, how can gays be on the battlefield, where they could be called upon to provide a blood transfusion to a fellow soldier, if they cannot legally donate blood?

What this means, if politics is played with the blood supply, is that that the five million Americans a year who receive blood transfusions, in addition to soldiers on the battlefield, could be exposed to the AIDS virus or other infections in the diseased blood of sexually active homosexuals.

Tragically, despite the life and death nature of this issue, news organizations are spreading deliberate lies.

For example, The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, California, reports that “Gay advocates in the Coachella Valley say now is the time to change the ban they consider discriminatory.” It then quoted David Brinkman, executive director of Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs, as saying, “There is no scientific or medical evidence that supports the need for the ban anymore. All blood is tested twice and there’s 100 percent accuracy to insure no HIV gets into the blood supply.”

I informed Nicole Brambila, the author of the story, that the claim she featured in her story was absolutely false. But she refuses to correct the record.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with jurisdiction over the blood supply, says, “Blood donor testing using current advanced technologies has greatly reduced the risk of HIV transmission but cannot yet detect all infected donors or prevent all transmission by transfusions. While today’s highly sensitive tests fail to detect less than one in a million HIV infected donors, it is important to remember that in the US there are over 20 million transfusions of blood, red cell concentrates, plasma or platelets every year. Therefore, even a failure rate of 1 in a million can be significant if there is an increased risk of undetected HIV in the blood donor population.”

This is one reason why gay males, or men who have sex with men (MSM), are prohibited from donating blood.

The FDA also says, “Detection of HIV infection is particularly challenging when very low levels of virus are present in the blood for example during the so-called ‘window period.’ The ‘window period’ is the time between being infected with HIV and the ability of an HIV test to detect HIV in an infected person….FDA’s MSM policy reduces the likelihood that a person would unknowingly donate blood during the ‘window period’ of infection. This is important because the rate of new infections in MSM is higher than in the general population and current blood donors.”

These critical facts are being carefully omitted from media coverage of the pending change. And because the major media are influenced or intimidated by such groups as the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the gay-run Media Matters organization, reporters can find themselves targeted as “haters” and “homophobes” if they tell the truth about the gay lifestyle. As a result, many writers and commentators decide to avoid the topic.

The truth is so sensitive that when the Obama Administration tapped a Washington University professor by the name of Jonathan I. Katz to serve on a scientific panel to review the handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he was immediately attacked because of his article, “In Defense of Homophobia,” on the dangers of homosexual behavior.

As a result of the outcry from the homosexual lobby, Katz was dropped from the panel, even though the article had nothing to do with the Gulf matter. This is how they operate—protest and intimidation. As we recently saw with George Will’s capitulation to the gay lobby, very few conservatives have the intestinal fortitude to go up against them.

Despite the controversial title, the Katz article is well-researched and touches on the gay blood problem, noting that the homosexual activists have been campaigning for a lifting of the ban for several years and that their position is that “In order to satisfy their demand for full acceptance by society, the homosexual movement demands to kill some transfusion recipients by infecting them with AIDS…”

Do you or your loved ones want to die in order to advance the gay rights agenda?

In advance of the Thursday and Friday meetings on blood safety, a federal notice has reiterated that male homosexuals “have an increased incidence and prevalence of several currently recognized transfusion-transmitted diseases”—Hepatitis B virus, HIV, syphilis, and cytomegalovirus.

It also says, “There is a theoretical concern that MSM populations may also be at increased risk for other unrecognized transfusion-transmitted agents.” That means another infectious agent could be lurking in the blood that they want to have the “right” to donate to the nation’s blood supply.

The move to lift the ban is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobby which contributes to the campaigns of liberal Congressional candidates. It reports “progress” in this effort, based on the fact that Senators John Kerry and Al Franken have done the organization’s bidding and pressured the federal government to hold the June 10 and 11 meetings to consider lifting the ban on gay blood. The FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, is a political appointee of the Obama Administration.

The pressure campaign has already forced the American Red Cross and two other blood groups to previously argue for lifting the ban. But the FDA, after reviewing the policy in 2006, reiterated the prohibition, which has been in effect since 1983 and applies to MSM since 1977, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

Randy Shilts’ book, And the Band Played On, and the movie by the same name that was based on it, documents how gays at that time of the discovery of AIDS and the virus causing it, HIV, were even then arguing that a ban on gay blood was discriminatory. The blood industry was then resisting the testing of the blood, mainly because of the cost.

The result was an unconscionable delay in banning gay blood and the unnecessary deaths of many people.

The gays even objected to the original name for AIDS as GRID, standing for gay-related immune deficiency. Another name for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,  the “gay cancer,” was also jettisoned because of its obvious association with the gay lifestyle.

Upset at the delay in responding to the dangers to the blood supply, one official of the Centers for Disease Control, reported Shilts, attended a meeting on blood safety and pounded his table with his fist, shouting, “How many people have to die? How many deaths do you need?”

A representative of hemophiliacs, dependent on blood transfusions for their day-to-day survival, objected to all of the talk at the time about the rights of gays not to be discriminated against, asking, “What about our right to live?”

Once again, as we have seen in the gays in the military debate, the gays are constantly screaming about their rights, oblivious to the point of madness about the rights of others. In this case, it’s our right to be free of infected blood when our loved ones get a blood transfusion.

But unless the public quickly offers its comments and raises an outcry with the federal authorities coming under the influence and intimidation of the gay rights lobby, the “right” to donate blood could soon be extended to a politically-connected special interest group that has a demonstrated propensity to acquire life-threatening and deadly diseases.

* CONTACT: Jerry A. Holmberg, Ph.D., Executive Secretary, Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services, 1101 Wootton Parkway, Suite 250, Rockville, MD 20852, (240) 453-8803, FAX (240) 453-8456, e-mail ACBSA@hhs.gov; Contact the Red Cross HERE and the the FDA HERE. Call Congress at 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 or go to www.congress.org.

Additional Red Cross information:

American Red Cross National Headquarters
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006

Phone: (202) 303-5000

General Red Cross Contact Page: http://www.redcross.org/contactus

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org