Dead Teen’s Organ Donation Rejected Because He Was Gay

[DonViejo]

By Mark Joseph Stern

It’s a sad fact of life that some of the greatest injustices sparked by anti-gay animus arise after death. The government seizes money that belongs to your widow. The state tries to keep your spouse off your death certificate. A pastor cancels your funeral because of your “blasphemous” lifestyle.

Here’s a new inequity to add to the list: The FDA rejects your organ donation—simply because you’re gay.

That’s what happened to A.J. Betts, a 16-year-old Iowan who committed suicide after a year and a half of ceaseless bullying on account of his orientation. Betts had always hoped to donate his organs after he died, and though some were successfully transplanted, his eyes were turned away and tossed out. Why? According to the Food and Drug Administration, a male donor who has had sex with men in the last five years “should … be ineligible” to donate some tissues, including eyes. (This policy is especially perplexing given that donors are screened for HIV before any organs are harvested, and Betts was permitted to donate other organs, including his heart.) Because Moore’s mother couldn’t prove whether Betts had had sex, his eyes were discarded.

The FDA’s anti-gay organ policies spring from the same insanely homophobic casuistry behind their anti-gay blood ban: an outdated, utterly irrational belief that all gay men are HIV-ridden disease vectors. Never mind that modern HIV tests can detect the virus from the moment of infectiousness, or that men who have sex with HIV-positive women and sex workers are only deferred for a year—or that a categorical ban on gays is just plain bad science. Other countries may lift their own gay blood bans, and medical experts may urge the FDA to revise its policies. But here in America, gay men’s bodies are still seen as blighted, dangerous, and infected.

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/08/15/dead_teen_s_organ_donation_rejected_because_he_was_gay.html?wpsrc=slatest_newsletter

[potone]

1. How very sad.

Rejected even in death. Another blow for his family.

[RKP5637]

2. Christ, it just doesn't fucken end! n/t

[Ms. Toad]

3. Needing an eye transplant is not a life threatening event.

The policies are in place to prevent it from turning into one.

The major organs, the failure of which is life threatening (heart & liver, for example), have different criteria. It includes multiple HIV tests (which are only 97% accurate at 3 months - not instantaneously accurate as the article states) and, where relevant, social history. When there is a risk of HIV, the receiving hospital is give full information so they can determine whether the risk of using a potentially HIV exposed organ outweighs the risk of death if there is no organ available. That is why other organs were used - the risk of death if organs are not available outweighs the slim risk if an HIV infection is not yet detectable. The balance is different for a non-essential organ.

For this teen, the real risk isn't that his mother didn't know 5 years of history - it is that she may not have know his history in the window prior to conversion (3 months for 97% of individuals). I am not familiar enough with the screening process for eyes (unlike major organs) to know precisely what the rules are.

I do know that the article contains significant inaccuracies (like saying that detection is instantaneous from the moment of infectiousness) that make me wonder about the rest of it. I also know that the organ donation process relies, in part, on kindly lies. When I volunteered to donate part of my liver to someone with the same disease as my daughter, I was told that I could back out until the very last minute and he would be told that there was some medical or policy reason I backed out. Similarly, liver recipients are told about and permitted to reject any organ with a risk of infection from certain diseases - and the donor families are not always told that the recipient rejected the organ because it is gentler to the grieving family to be able to rail against an agency or a policy rather than an (ungrateful) organ recipient.