LGBT: The FDA has recently started to crack down on discriminatory protocols on anonymous sperm donations.
Isabel De La Garza, Senior Writer
In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued several HIV safety protocols, banning homosexual males from giving blood, tissue and sperm. The most widely known bans are obviously the two former, due to the fact that sperm donation is not as publicized. Under this regulation, men who have engaged in any sexual behavior with other males (protected or unprotected) are barred from being anonymous donors unless they have abstained for five years.
Many clinics did not enforce these regulations strictly until recently, as only five percent of men are now accepted as donors. As the regulations have become more strict, many are finding this policy absolutely ridiculous. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, a firm that has been proposing more equal test and donation procedures, said, “The part that I find most offensive—and a little frightening—is that it isn’t based on good science […] and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay people out of the pool.” The numerous calls for repeal and open ridicule of the regulation have not deterred the FDA, which merely replied that it is “very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors.” These strict procedures are extremely discriminatory, especially considering they allow heterosexual men, who have engaged in unprotected sexual activity with HIV-positive women, to become donors again within a year.
The FDA believes that because homosexual men have the highest AIDS virus rate in our nation (according to the Centers for Disease Control), it would be prudent to exclude them from sperm donation to prevent women hoping to conceive from developing the disease and/or passing it on to their child. While the intentions are good, the FDA preys upon the nation’s lack of understanding of the AIDS virus. AIDS does not get passed through sperm because sperm is not a T or CD4 white blood cell, which HIV targets and reproduces through. As such, sperm is a cell incapable of carrying HIV. Bodily fluids, on the other hand, serve as channels through which the HIV virus can travel through to find a host cell. So the seminal and other fluids that protect the sperm and allow it to survive in the acidic female reproductive system often contain HIV.
However, as the sperm itself is not affected, heterosexual HIV discordant couples can still have children through artificial insemination and sperm washing and not have HIV spread to the mother or the child. Additionally, sperm banks have stringent test procedures for all donors and test both the donor and the sperm sample (semen) for HIV and other diseases before and after the procedure and before insemination. It is, therefore, unnecessary to bar all gay men if they, and their sample, will be tested numerous times.
According to an online Stanford publication on infertility, the FDA and numerous clinics go so far as to prevent disease only to later state that the procedures “are not foolproof” and the client “must understand that she/he is fully responsible for the offspring conceived by the use of the specimens.” This implies that they do not care as much about the safety of the child and mother as they would like people to believe. Rather than the hypocritical practice of banning some risky donors for a short time and others for a long time, more stringent rules should be applied for donors who actually have a higher risk of carrying AIDS due to the frequency of their unprotected sexual behavior, their number of sexual partners and HIV status rather than their sexuality. Another method to avoid such bans would be to simply use the same security methods used on heterosexual men’s sperm as on homosexual men’s.
According to Leland Traiman, director of a California sperm bank, “adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases. […] Even experts within the FDA say [it] is safe.” This method, which is currently in place, is working well for heterosexual males (who are currently on the rise in their percentage of HIV rates, according to the CDC) and keeps many hopeful mothers safe from disease. If homosexual males were tested in the same way, rather than being barred for their sexual behavior, women who wish to have children would then have more candidates from which to choose. The policy of excluding many safe individuals from anonymous sperm donation is extremely discriminatory and unreasonable and needs change. There are plenty of other methods of keeping people safe.