Blood transfusion is vital for a lot of people and can be the difference between life or death. Many people receive blood transfusions because of injuries, surgeries, anemia, or other causes. To donate blood to everyone in need of it, it would take almost 10,000 people donating daily.

For the past few years and even recently, people have been encouraged to donate… everyone except men who have had sexual contact with other men in the past 3 months. This has been an ongoing and outdated policy. But why is this a policy? It is because of the concern of HIV.

This policy was established in the 1980s during the HIV epidemic, when people did not have much information on HIV. This disease killed thousands, and many blood transfusion patients got HIV. It spread throughout the world, and infected millions. There was much concern and attention brought to this disease in 1980 through the early 2000s. Recently though, tests with 99-100% accuracy have concluded that the chance of contracting HIV through blood transfusion is 1 in 1.5 million. The policy still hasn’t been removed, because many people believe that there is still a chance that someone could catch HIV.

Critics are calling for an end to this policy, saying it “enforces latent homophobia and leaves America’s blood supply vulnerable to unscientific limits.” To put this into perspective, a man who is sexually active with another man is not permitted to donate blood, while a straight man who is sexually active with one or multiple females could donate blood easily.

“We find ourselves in a situation where the victims directly affected by this tragedy and in need of lifesaving blood are the very people banned from donating it,” says the National Gay Blood Drive organization on their website.