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Again, that’s more of a possibility with a higher-risk population. That means that someone who just became infected with HIV could come in to donate blood and test negative. If the ban is lifted altogether, we run into the problem that our current lab test can detect an HIV infection only if it’s been at least 10 days since exposure. The more likely donations are to be infected, the higher the chances of that kind of mistake become.
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But an administrative error can occur, causing blood to be accidentally released into the blood supply instead of going to the incinerator.
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That blood should then be quarantined and incinerated. In that case, under a one-year deferral, blood banks would detect the HIV infection during their testing process. By introducing a population with such a heightened risk for HIV into the donor pool, it becomes more likely that someone will donate who is HIV-positive and doesn’t realize it. The FDA estimates that HIV prevalence is 60 times higher among men who have sex with men than it is in the general public, and 800 times higher than it is in first-time blood donors, who are typically healthier than the general public. shows that changing the lifetime deferral on men who have sex with men will increase the risk of HIV-infected blood entering the blood supply. On the other side of the debate are those who say that men who have sex with men still face a heightened risk of contracting HIV and that even a small increased threat to the blood supply isn’t justifiable. Many would like to see the policy changed to resemble the U.K.'s one-year deferral policy or have the ban lifted altogether. Some experts in the field of blood safety - as well as gay rights activists - say that it’s discriminatory and that scientific advances in testing for HIV render it obsolete. That policy has become increasingly controversial in recent years. Food and Drug Administration implemented the ban in 1983 after an estimated 10,000 people with the bleeding disorder hemophilia became infected with HIV through transfusions of HIV-tainted blood. In the United States, however, men who have sex with men are still subject to a lifetime ban on donating blood. Some countries have regulations that focus on potential donors’ risky sexual behavior rather than their sexual orientation. Many of those countries require sexually active gay men to wait a year before giving blood, while others have deferral periods of six months or five years. joined France, Italy, Japan and eight other developed countries in allowing gay and bisexual men to contribute to the nation’s blood supply. Instead, health officials there implemented a new policy that allows men to become blood donors as long as they haven’t had sex with another man in the previous year. Last month, the United Kingdom lifted its long-standing ban on accepting blood donations from gay men.