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Medicine and SocietyFree Preview

Rethinking the Ban — The U.S. Blood Supply and Men Who Have Sex with Men

List of authors.
  • Chana A. Sacks, M.D.,
  • Robert H. Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D.,
  • and Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., M.P.H.

The U.S. ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men was instituted at a time of great uncertainty, but advances in testing and in understanding of disease transmission offer better ways than a sweeping ban to minimize the risk of transfusion-related HIV.

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Funding and Disclosures

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.

This article was published on November 16, 2016, at NEJM.org.

We thank Carlos del Rio, M.D., for his critical review of the manuscript.

Author Affiliations

From the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (C.A.S.), the Divisions of General Internal Medicine (C.A.S., R.P.W.) and Infectious Disease (R.H.G., R.P.W.) and the Medical Practice Evaluation Center (R.P.W.), Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research, Harvard Medical School (R.P.W.) — all in Boston.

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