HIV/AIDS | The Adobo Chronicles

Washington, D.C. (The Adobo Chronicles) – Federal health officials today issued two new rulings that would eventually lift the 31-year-old ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood while eliminating what many believe has been a discriminatory policy.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) implemented the lifetime ban on donations from men who have sex with men in 1983, when health officials were first recognizing the risk of contracting AIDS via blood transfusions. Under the policy, blood donations are barred from any man who has had sex with another man at any time since 1977 — the start of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S.

Now, the FDA said it favors replacing the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had man-on-man sex in the previous 12 months.

The second ruling now requires heterosexual men who wish to donate blood to be celibate for 12 months. The FDA said this new policy would, in effect, make the playing field equal between gay/bisexual men and heterosexual men.

Both lgbt activists and the medical community immediately praised the new FDA rulings.

San Francisco, California (The Adobo Chronicles)- An openly-gay San Francisco politician has gone public about being sexually active and wants to be a community sex symbol while serving as a role model for the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Supervisor Scott Wiener who represents the predominantly gay Castro district has announced that he has been taking the one-pill-a-day pre-exposure prophylaxis believed to prevent HIV infection. It is known as PrEP (brand name Truvada).

Wiener, who said he was HIV negative, said that abstinence from sex is still the best way to prevent infection. “Since I don’t want to abstain from sex, I have to find a way to keep my HIV-negative status. Condoms are not 100% effective,” he added.

Other community activists criticized Wiener’s decision to come out about PrEP, pointing out that Truvada — unlike condoms –does not protect people from sexually-transmitted diseases other than HIV. They said that PrEP may lead people to throw out condoms altogether and to totally abandon safer sex practices.

Wiener refused to reveal how many times per week he engages in sex, or how many multiple partners he has had — anonymous or not. He would ‘t say either whether or not he’s been having unprotected sex. “Those are very personal information ” he said.

We assume that revealing one’s prophylaxis regimen – like Wiener did – is not.