Federal Policy Bans Gay and Bi Men from Corneal Donations

Much like the blood donation policy, which bans men who have had sex with other men, or MSM, from being donors, a similar policy has been implemented relating to corneal or eye donations. Michael Puente, MD, recently did a study that had interesting findings. Reaching out to OUT FRONT in a press release, Puente stated:

“Many forms of blindness can be cured with a corneal transplant surgery using eye tissue from a deceased donor, but there’s a severe shortage of donated corneas across the world. My research found that the FDA’s five-year deferral policy for MSM cornea donors (as well as a similar policy in Canada) is depriving up to 3,217 blind patients of vision-restoring surgery each year.

“There has been a lot of attention drawn to the FDA’s three-month deferral period for MSM blood donors, but very few people are aware there’s an FDA-mandated deferral period 20 times as long for MSM corneal donors. This FDA policy has not been updated since 1994 despite tremendous advances in HIV testing, and this policy has received almost no press attention.”

Eye banks were asked if they keep records of referrals disqualified specifically because of the federal MSM restrictions and, if so, how many referrals they disqualified in 2018 owing to MSM status.

There has never been a reported case of HIV transmission through corneal transplant surgery. In 10 reported cases of corneal transplants from the 1980s and 1990s using tissue from donors who were found to be HIV-positive after surgery, none of the corneal recipients contracted the virus. Meanwhile, all 12 patients who received solid organ transplants, such as hearts, lungs, and kidneys, from those same donors did contract HIV, indicating that the corneas did not carry enough virus, if any, for transmission.

These policies disqualified an estimated 1558 to 3217 corneal donations by otherwise eligible MSM donors in the United States and Canada just in 2018. With reliable, modern HIV testing and with many countries experiencing severe corneal shortages, these federal policies may be decreasing the availability of vision-restoring surgery, suggesting these policies should be reevaluated in light of current scientific evidence.