Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Under the proposal, the current blanket ban on donations from gay and bisexual men would be replaced with a policy barring donations from men who have had sex with men in the last year.

The FDA says it favors ending the nation’s lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, replacing it with a policy barring donations from men who have had sex with men in the previous 12 months.

Eighty congressional lawmakers sent a letter Monday to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, calling for the Department to replace the FDA’s lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men with a policy based on individual risk factors.

The Blood Products Advisory Committee will not reconvene to continue discussions or to recommend that the FDA end its lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men.

Health advisers have concerns about lifting a nationwide ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, despite growing pressure from gay rights advocates, medical experts and blood banks.

WASHINGTON — Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will meet this week to consider a recommendation that it end its lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have had sex with men. An FDA panel will begin a two-day meeting on the issue Tuesday, amid growing calls from medical groups, gay rights activists and…

ARLINGTON, Va. — A panel of doctors and blood donor advocates who advise the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services voted Thursday to recommend that the federal government end its lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.

WASHINGTON – A young gay rights activist has filed what is believed to be the first federal lawsuit challenging the U. S. Food and Drug Administration’s ban on gay and bisexual men from donating blood. Virginia resident Caleb Laieski, 19, filed his suit Thursday in U.S. District Court, and alleges that the FDA ban is discriminatory and unconstitutional…

PLEASANT HILL, Iowa — Months before taking his own life last year, Alexander (AJ) Betts, a 16-year-old teen from Iowa, volunteered to become an organ donor. But a Food and Drug Administration policy which prohibits men who have sex with men from donating tissue, has barred Betts from fulfilling one of his final wishes, because he was gay.

WASHINGTON — As an AIDS activist in the early 1990s, Gregg Gonsalves traveled to Washington to challenge the Food and Drug Administration. Gonsalves was part of the confrontational group Act Up, which staged protests outside the FDA’s headquarters, disrupted its public meetings and pressured its leaders into speeding up the approval of experimental drugs for patients …