Howard Brown Health Center, 4025 N. Sheridan Rd., will take part in the National Gay Blood Drive July 11. Gay and bisexual men are asked to come into HBHC along with a surrogate who will donate blood on their behalf, and both will then sign a petition asking that the FDA ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men be lifted, according to DNAInfo.com.
The FDA ban, imposed on any man who has had sex with another man since 1977, has been in place since the 1980s.
“What’s important is the screening, not someone’s sexual orientation,” Michelle Wetzel, HBHC’s senior vice president of Policy, Strategy and Business Development, told DNAInfo. “The ban comes from a time when there was a lot of fear of the unknown, and it’s just not the case anymore so to continue to have this ban is just blatant discrimination by the FDA.”
The local blood drive takes place at HBHC from noon-5 p.m. July 11. Other drives are taking place in several dozen cities on the same day, in an effort to bring awareness to the discriminatory nature of the ban and ongoing shortages of blood supplies.
DNAInfo’s article is at: dnain.fo/1q1DeYs.