'The FDA's responsibility is to maintain a high level of blood product safety for people whose lives depend on it,' Stephen Ostroff, at the time the FDA's acting commissioner, said about the change in December. But the FDA is concerned about recent, sometimes undetectable infections, according to their website. PrEP is a pill used to prevent HIV taken by people with partners who have HIV or those at risk. Prevention methods like PrEP, for example, can help reduce the risk of transmission of HIV. After donations, blood is tested for several infectious agents and the FDA inspects all blood facilities at least every two years. Technology has progressed enough for others to prevent the disease and detect it early, he added. Louie said the current policy is discriminatory because it promotes a stigma that HIV is inherently a gay disease and that only gay men receive it, which is false. Gay and bisexual men have been ineligible to donate blood for more than 30 years, beginning in 1983 at the start of the AIDS crisis when little was known about the disease. In December 2015, the FDA lifted its lifetime ban on accepting blood donations from gay men in light of the culmination of new scientific evidence and criticism from both the medical and LGBT community.
