Editorial: Thicker than sexuality: Let gay and bisexual men donate blood like anyone else

The Food and Drug Administration is on the cusp of changing rules so that more gay and bisexual men can donate blood like anyone else. It’s about time. Rules in place since 2015, which replaced a longstanding outright ban imposed in the 1980s to frustrate the spread of HIV during the AIDS epidemic, made all gay and bisexual men abstain from sex for a year before being eligible to give blood. That was reduced to three months during the COVID-19 pandemic, when blood bank reserves fell to dangerously low levels. But those shortages persist. Earlier this year, the American Red Cross for the first …

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