| "The Food and Drug Administration is trying to
stop gay men from having children," dramatically declared Leland Traiman,
director and owner of the Rainbow Flag Health Services & Sperm Bank.
"They are putting forward proposed regulations that would do two things:
One, they would ban all gay men from being anonymous sperm donors and,
second, they mandate that all directed donors would have to freeze their
sperm and quarantine it for six months and then be retested for HIV before
their sperm could be used for insemination." (Directed donations are those
where the donor and the woman who wants to be inseminated know each other,
as is frequently the case when a lesbian couple wants a gay male friend
to be the donor.)
On May 17 Traiman shot off a letter to a plethora of gay publications,
which was signed by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union,
the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, the National Center for Lesbian
Rights and the Sperm Bank of Northern California, opposing the new proposals.
Currently, there are no regulations governing sperm donation, but the FDA
wants to change all that as part of its plan to regulate blood and biological
tissue transfers.
The new regulations that Traiman mentions were proposed by Dr. Ruth
Solomon, director of the Human Tissue Program at the FDA. The proposals,
if adopted, would prohibit any man who has had sex with men in the past
five years from being an anonymous sperm donor, and also make it more difficult
for gay directed donors to give sperm by making them wait six months. According
to Traiman, the six- month frozen quarantine is an equally insidious way
to prevent gay sperm donation. Traiman argues the quarantine period is
overly long because HIV antibody tests, in the vast majority of cases,
turn positive within two to three months. Plus, he says, "Given the fact
that only one out of every six men has sperm that survives the freezing
process well enough to meet minimum fertility standards, [this amounts
to] mass sterilization through regulation."
Not surprisingly, that is not how the FDA sees it. Dr. Solomon was not
available for comment. But when asked if the FDA is discriminating against
gay men, Lenore Gelb, an FDA public information officer, flatly asserted:
"That's not true. It's true that the goal of the policy is to try to control
and prevent the spread of infectious diseases." And one risk factor, said
Geld, is men having sex with other men. She also stated that the six-month
freeze on directed donor sperm is a tissue and blood products industry
standard. "That's because the tests are not perfect--as good as they are,
[they're not] perfect," she said. She also insisted that there will be
flexibility in the system for gay directed donors. Gelb also asserted that
the proposals are still being processed, and that there will be time for
public comment on the new regulations, which aren't due to be finalized
for several months.
But Traiman pointed out that the system allows straight men with multiple
partners, another risk factor, to donate--but not gay men. And, ironically,
he said the only case the FDA could cite backing the need for a long quarantine
involved a straight man, infected by his wife, who didn't
seroconvert for two years.
Maura Riordon, director of the Sperm Bank of California, doesn't buy
the FDA's contention that the regulations aren't discriminatory, but instead
are based on risk behavior: "They say it's not discrimination, but let's
look at who does that behavior." She also took issue with the contention
the antibody tests aren't quite good enough: "That's throwing science out
the window. We have said since the '80s that HIV testing is an accurate
tool--this is the science it takes to detect HIV. So why aren't we screening
low-risk men who have sex with men?"
--Tim Kingston |