To the Editor:
Emily Breslin's '10 column ("Brown, the FDA, ROTC and discrimination," April 15) states that, because 48.1 percent of people living with HIV attributed their infection to male-to-male contact, indiscriminately excluding MSM (men who have sex with men) from donating blood makes our blood supply safer. I take issue with her use of statistics.
According to a 2010 CDC fact sheet, MSM do indeed constitute about 48 percent of those living with HIV, or about 532,000 people. Based on current estimates by the CDC and Census Bureau, there are about 6,000,000 MSM in the United States. This means that about nine percent of American MSM are HIV positive. The rest, about 5.5 million people, are inexplicably barred from donating blood.
For a number of reasons, people having unprotected anal sex with varied partners are at the greatest risk of contracting HIV. The FDA, however, does not distinguish between types of sexual contact. Furthermore, since all donated blood is tested for HIV, and viral presence in donations is detected about three weeks after infection, the FDA makes no distinction as to when sexual contact occurred, though it does for heterosexuals.
The FDA's policy is unfair because it (mis)uses general trends in the diverse MSM community to discriminate against individual gay and bisexual men. Not all MSM engage in risky sexual practices, and the use of misleading statistics to shove this message down the throats of the American public is less about legitimate worries over the blood supply and more about making homosexuality seem unhealthy and dangerous.
Andrew Bergmanson '11
April 15
ADVERTISEMENT
