Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

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 …

A National Gay Blood Drive is taking place in more than 60 U.S. cities on Friday to call attention to the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s longstanding ban prohibiting gay and bisexual men from donating blood. The drive – which is open to everyone – is organized by filmmaker and activist Ryan James Yezak with the help of local leaders and volunteers from …

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is leading a group of 85 House and Senate lawmakers criticizing what she’s says is the sluggish pace the nation’s top health officials have taken at reevaluating blood donation policies for gay men.

LOS ANGELES — Gay rights activists are planning protests at blood donation centers across the nation on Friday to combat the Food and Drug Administration’s ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men.

The American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians in the U.S., voted Tuesday to oppose a decades long ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which prohibits gay men from donating blood, reported ABC News.