If the Food and Drug Administration amends or overturns its law that prevents gay men from donating blood, Red Cross can easily increase its much-needed blood supply up to 4 percent, concluded by a Williams Institute policy fellow.
In a prepared statement that was published in the institute's website last September 19, 2014, Ayako Miyashita, along with Gareth J. Gates, reveals that by lifting the ban against men who had sex with other men from donating blood, it will provide an additional 350,000 Red Cross donors and produce no less than 600,000 pints of blood supply. This figure can then save the lives of as many 1.8 million people.
According to Red Cross, an organization that provides around 40% of blood across over 2,500 hospitals in the country, while over 35% of the population in the United States can donate, no more than 10% do so. Yet every 2 seconds, somebody would require it such as a car accident victim that may need as much as 100 pints or more than 1 million cancer patients that should have constant blood supply during chemotherapy.
Furthermore, the study called "UPDATE: Effects of Lifting Blood Donation Bans on Men Who Have Sex with Men" cited that if men who do not have any sex with men for the last 12 months can donate, they will increase the blood supply to more than 300,000 pints. Men who abstain from MSM for the next 5 years, meanwhile, can boost blood donors to almost 180,000, driving the blood supply to extra 290,000 plus.
Since 1983, the FDA had banned gay men who engaged in sex with other men whether for pleasure or for money since 1977 from donating blood as a way of preventing the possible spread of infectious diseases such as HIV and later AIDS.
Other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom also had a similar ruling. However, they had already modified theirs to a suspension up to 5 years instead of indefinitely.
To call the attention of the FDA to overturn the ban as well, various petitions and drives have been organized over the past years.