Professor Asks: Why Can’t Gay Men Donate Blood? (Q Salt Lake)
Since 1985, the U.S. federal government has prohibited men who have sex with men from donating blood, organs and tissues if they have had sex with another man after 1977. And while the American Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banks want to see the controversial policy ended, the Health and Human Services’ Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability voted, this summer, to keep the policy in place.
Like many people concerned with public health, Jeffrey A. Bennett would like this policy to become, like the idea that AIDS is a “gay disease,” a thing of the past.
Bennett, an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, will speak about the ban at Westminster College on Nov. 4. In his lecture, “Resisting the Ban on Queer Blood: Revisiting the Rhetoric of Scientific Deliberation,” he will look at and address arguments made during this summer’s HHS meeting, in which panel members voted 9-6 to keep the prohibition in place.
[...]
Complete article at Q Salt Lake : http://bit.ly/bKVq7c
