SAN JOSE, CA  --  The San Jose State University has suspended all campus blood drives because the government's policy that bars gay men from donating blood violates the school's nondiscrimination policy.

San Jose State University President Don Kassing says the controversial move - believed to be a first by an American college - comes because the FDA policy that bars any man who has had sex with another man since 1977 from giving blood "violates our non-discrimination policy," Mercury News reports.

The issue has cropped up on college campuses across the country, primarily as gay student groups protest blood drives. The American Red Cross and other national organizations that regularly run blood drives also have been pushing the FDA to revise the policy, which has been in place since AIDS first emerged in the United States in the early 1980s. State-of-the-art blood-screening techniques make the lifetime ban unnecessary, the groups say.

Officials at local blood banks are not pleased with Kassing's decision. They say could lead to a drop in blood donations at numerous Bay Area colleges and put patients' lives at risk.

"This is a terribly misguided tactic that could have a devastating impact on the blood supply and, therefore, patients in our community," the Stanford Blood Center, which collects hundreds of units of blood from San Jose State each year, said in a statement. "We agree that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's lifetime ban on donations from men who have sex with men is overly restrictive. . . . However, it is not appropriate to withhold lifesaving blood donations while taking on a national health policy issue."

Students, on the other hand, are more positive to the bold stand.

"It's discrimination," said junior Kelsea Scott, 21, an English major. "This is a campus full of culture and diversity and that shouldn't happen here."

Miller Duong, a 23-year-old senior majoring in economics, noted that blood can be tested for HIV.

"It's immoral to tell people no," he said. "Every person is human. Blood is blood."

Last update: 02-01-2008 11:19