Really, FDA? REALLY?!

I've known for a long time that the Red Cross doesn't accept blood donations from men who have had sex with another man, even once. I had thought that this was because the Red Cross wanted to be especially cautious about the possibility of transmitting HIV to recipients of donated blood; statistically speaking, male-male sex carries a higher rate of transmission than heterosexual sex or female-female sex, so I figured the Red Cross was simply choosing to eliminate a group of people it deemed too risky.

It wasn't until today, through a pair of letters to the New York Times, that I learned two things: 1) the Red Cross and other collectors of donated blood didn't choose this ban, it was imposed on them by the FDA; and 2) that ban extends to bone marrow.

As one of the letters puts it, "It’s rare that patients are unable to get the blood type they need, but the stakes are much higher when a marrow transplant may be the only way to save a cancer patient’s life. Finding a well-matched marrow donor is much more difficult. If I had leukemia and my only chance for a cure was a gay man’s bone marrow, I’d take that chance — and I think anyone else would, too." No kidding!

But the FDA won't allow you that choice. It won't allow you to say, "Yes, I recognize that if I take this donated marrow, there is a slightly increased risk to my life because of the possibility of HIV, but I also recognize that there is an immediate and known threat to my life from cancer, and it's obviously to my benefit to take the marrow." The same is true of blood donation; although the threat to one's life of not receiving a gay man's donation may be less than with a bone marrow transplant, it should still be a patient's own decision, after a careful consideration of the risks and benefits.

FDA: Butt out. It's every individual's sovereign right to decide what will and will not go into his own body, by his own judgment and not some bureaucrat's.