You have to admit, that’s a clever title. Seriously though, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently paved the way for more gay and bisexual men to donate blood by finalizing, after two years, their new risk-based recommendations for blood donation. Going forward, all prospective donors will be asked the same set of questions regardless of their sex or sexual orientation.

For many years, the FDA upheld a ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood, a policy that was put in place in 1983 during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, based on the presumption that gay men are at higher risk of contracting HIV and other blood-borne infections. The ban was one of the many measures taken to curtail the transmission of HIV, and at the time, it was considered prudent and medically necessary given the lack of information and understanding about the disease.

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