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“There's so many things I remember from that tragic day,” Demings said. Five years ago, Demings’ community was rocked by the Pulse Nightclub shooting, which saw 49 people killed, many of whom were Latino and LGBTQ+. The Democratic lawmaker, who is challenging Republican incumbent Marco Rubio for a seat in the Senate next year, also has a personal connection to this fight. It is one of the most precious life-saving gifts." "The ability to donate blood saves lives. “The sooner this happens, the better," Florida Rep.
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Some lawmakers are calling for the FDA to do away with these restrictions completely. “Yet a woman who has had unprotected sex with multiple partners over the same time frame with no knowledge of their personal histories remains in the donor pool.” “For example, a man who has had protected oral sex with another man once in the 3 months currently (is) barred from donating blood,” the Human Rights Campaign says. What the FDA’s guidance doesn’t take into account is men who are practicing safe sexual practices, or those who are in monogamous relationships, advocates say. The policy was revised in 2015 to a 12-month deferral period - meaning that in order to donate blood, MSMs needed to abide by a year-long abstinence span - and revised again in April 2020 to three months, citing the “urgent need for blood” at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1983, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) barred blood donations from all men who have had sex with men (MSM) after 1977 “to reduce the transmission of HIV by blood and blood products.” “Knowing that I wasn’t able to donate made me feel almost useless,” Graham said, adding: “It definitely made me feel like I wasn’t contributing in a meaningful way to something that’s super easy to do.” “I was ineligible because of the FDA’s ban on men who have sex with men donating blood and/or blood products,” the 26-year-old Navy veteran said. “It’s personal,” Graham told Spectrum News’ Samantha-Jo Roth, noting that his desire to donate dates back to high school and his service in the military - and when his younger cousin needed a bone marrow transplant a few years ago. "Now that the government is finally coming around and are trying to get past this discriminatory policy and you can't get enough people, that is your own doing and you need to try harder.Jude Graham has always wanted to give blood.
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"When you tell a group of people for decades that they can't do this life-saving thing of donating blood, it kind of becomes ingrained in them that this isn't something they can do," Yezak said. Ryan James Yezak, the founder of the National Gay Blood Drive, an organization that advocates for the equal treatment of blood donations by gay and bisexual men, says the federal government needs make more of an effort with the community to raise awareness and boost participation for the study. The results of the ADVANCE study were expected in December 2021, but have been delayed due lack of participation, according to the American Red Cross. "If the study's scientific evidence supports the use of the different eligibility questions, it could lead to further efforts to change the MSM eligibility criteria," a spokesperson for the American Red Cross wrote in a statement to CBS News. The study will evaluate whether updating the screening questionnaire that all donors fill out to focus more on individual risk would be as effective as a blanket, time-based deferral in reducing the risk of HIV in the blood supply. The American Red Cross, along with national blood banks like Vitalant and OneBlood, are conducting the study. The study aims to enroll 2,000 men through 11 national blood banks in several participating cities.
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Last year, the FDA launched a study known as ADVANCE, or Assessing Donor Variability and New Concepts in Eligibility, to examine whether the three-month donor deferral period can be amended based on an individual risk assessment.