‘It’s discriminatory’: LGBTQ2 advocates frustrated with tissue donation policy

'There’s not a need to turn away an entire demographic of donors when we are facing a shortage, and it’s just discriminatory,' says an advocate for the LGBTQ2 community.

Advocates and members of the LGBTQ2 community in Canada and the United States are frustrated with the policies that limit queer people’s ability to donate tissue following their deaths.

According to Nova Scotia Health, Canada’s regional tissue banks use the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) screening processes when determining if donors are eligible to donate.

However, the AATB’s screening guidelines follow a 19-year-old U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation stating men who have sex with men (MSM) must be deferred from donating for five years after the relationship ends.

“With tissue donation, the vast majority of donors are deceased at the time of procurement and screening, so people just aren’t aware of it,” said Cole Williams, founder of the American organization Pride and Plasma. “There’s not a need to turn away an entire demographic of donors when we are facing a shortage, and it’s just discriminatory.”

Pride and Plasma is an activist group that aims to reform America’s deferment policies that discriminate against MSM donors.

The group was originally formed to change the FDA’s blood regulation, but is now looking at the MSM tissue deferment as the next policy in need of reform. But Williams said any change to the FDA policy wouldn’t mean an end to the issue.

“If we were to see a reduction from the five-year deferment policy for tissue,” he said, “that doesn’t mean that there would be anything put in place, and it would still have to go from the FDA to AATB.”

According to Nova Scotia Health, changes made to AATB’s guidelines are then adopted by Canada’s regional tissue banks, which determine donor eligibility.