Hello my fellow students.
Last week the Associated Students' Senate hosted a discussion regarding a resolution Dr. Luttmann proposed to the Academic Senate which "strongly urges the campus Administration to rescind immediately the authorization of Blood Banks to operate on this campus, due to their discriminatory policy against gay men". Present in the discussion were Dr. Rick Luttmann, Dr. Georgia Schwartz (Director of SSU's Student Health Center), Cathy Bryan (President and CEO of the Blood Bank of the Redwoods), and Dianna Nation (Chair of JUMP, the student organization that hosts the blood drives).
Dr. Luttmann posits that the era when it made sense to disallow men who have had sex with men to donate blood due an increased risk of transmitting HIV into the blood supply has passed. He claims that in the last 30 years, screening has become more accurate and that it is unnecessary to bar gay men from donating blood.
Dr. Georgia Schwartz helped to clarify the FDA's policy explaining some of the logic behind multiple measures to reduce the risk of transmitting disease into the blood supply. Screening is a very effective measure to ensure the safety of the supply, but no test is 100% reliable. Nor is any blood collection site, nor any blood storage facility, nor any lab technician. There is always room for error. The policy to deffer patients at higher risk of infection of certain diseases, then, provides protection at the front end of the blood supply. By having safety measures on both ends, the supply is safer.
This is, however, an extremely complicated issue. Statistics show that gay men are still at a much higher risk for infection, but that other groups such as certain racial minorities as well as heterosexual women have new infection rates higher than that of gay men. Should they, too, be prohibited from donating blood?
The discussion at the senate table was not intended to answer or bring resolution to the many questions these issues raise. We will, however, consider a resolution sponsored by one of the student senators at our meeting March 5th. This resolution opposes the interruption of blood donation services at Sonoma State.
Berkeley has a very interesting program to address the issue. This February, Berkeley held its first ever "Sponsor Blood Drive" where those who could not donate for one of the 50 reasons you can be turned away from donating blood were encouraged to go out and find someone to donate blood in their name. The idea is to raise awareness about the policy.
So I ask you, my fellow students, what do you think? Is the FDA policy barring gay men from donating blood unnecessarily restrictive? Is it discriminatory? Is it homophobic? Should Sonoma State continue to host blood drives despite the policy? Leave your comments here or send me an email. We welcome all input as we evaluate the issue of blood drives and the FDA policy.
Jonathan T. White
Associated Students
Speaker of the Senate
speakera@sonoma.edu
Thursday, February 28, 2008
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2 comments:
This was a helpful analysis of the information provided to the Senate. You also brought up an enticing alternative for those who cannot donate blood. Perhaps the resolution coming to the next senate meeting will reflect those options which make a statement without reducing the valuable blood supply.
There are a couple of key elements from my part of the discussion at ASI that should be added to this summary on the blog site, since my primary goal was to suggest an informed, evidence based approach to the following question:
1. Should the Blood Bank and blood drives be banned from campus because of disagreement with a donor screening regulation?
--The Blood Bank is not the source of the regulation in question.They must comply with federal guidelines regarding blood safety. SSU Blood Drives provide about 5% of the blood supply to Sonoma County.
2. Does ASI have sufficient information to evaluate the current FDA blood safety regulations?
--The scientific data and ethical considerations behind the multilayered FDA safety approach are complex and require study in order to make an informed vote on the topic. Readings should include a summary by the FDACenter for Biologics Evaluation and Research at www.fda.gov/cber/faq/msmdonor.htm a transcript of an FDA Advisory Committee meeting in March of 2006 http://www.fda.gov/cber/minutes/nat030806t.htm as well as the data,scientific studies, and advisory meetings (especially September 2000) they reference or provide links to. The 2006 and 2000minutes include input from those advocating a change to the current policy and those wanting more evidence that a proposed change in policy would be safe.
Additional sources include the American Association of Bloodbanks
http://www.aabb.org who represents the blood industry - including Blood Bank of the Redwoods - in advocating for a change to shorter deferral period for "men who have had sex with another man,even once" (MSM) and the Canadian Hemophilia Society who articulates the concerns of a population particularly dependent on the safety of blood products www.hemophilia.ca/en/1.2.2.php
3. Is the FDA donor eligibility policy only about HIV and gay men?
--HIV is not the only infectious agent of concern and most deferral criteria are behavior based. MSM is one of a number of behaviors and circumstances for which people are determined ineligible to donate blood. The more than 50 different reasons for not being eligible to donate blood are presented at:
http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_557_,00.html
4. What criteria would ASI use to decide if changing current FDA policy or practice is warranted or how /when it should be changed?
5. How would ASI want to express their informed decision?
Georgia Schwartz, MD
Director, SSU Student Health Center
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