February 2008 Ethics Dunces

San Jose State President Don Kassing

Since the height of the AIDS crisis decades ago, the federal Food and Drug Administration has prohibited blood donations from men who had sexual relations with other men at any time after 1977. In recent years, groups such as the American Red Cross have argued that the conditions of the prohibition are excessive, since modern blood testing will catch any diseases contracted more than three weeks before the donation. But nobody has ever contended that it was designed to harm gays. It is intended to protect the blood supply for everyone, gays and straights alike.

Nonetheless, San Jose State's president, Don Kassing, has banned blood donations from campus on the grounds that the policy violates the campus's rules against discrimination. This is thoughtless showboating. Being prevented from having a pint of blood taken out of your arm is hardly the kind of unfair treatment that anti-discrimination laws were designed to protect. The FDA's policy may be excessively cautious, but it is not senseless bigotry. One could argue that the policy stigmatizes gay men; one could also argue that the stigma arises out of the HIV infection statistics, not the blood donor policy. Other groups are prevented from donating blood, such as people who have been tattooed in the previous twelve months.

Meanwhile, Kassing's protest will probably kill people. Blood drives on the San Jose campus bring in an estimated 1,000 pints a year. That blood will be lost if the protest stands, but the hidden costs may be worse. Many students who first give blood in campus drives go on to become lifelong donors, say health officials.

In a MediaNews story about the San Jose State ban, Lisa Bloch, spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Blood Centers of the Pacific, called Kassing's decision "irresponsible. "We completely understand the feeling that this regulation is unfair," Bloch said. "But rather than join us in lobbying the FDA and talking to members of Congress, he's putting patients at risk." Sure enough, the media reports that there is a shortage of type O and A blood in the San Jose area. Does that make you proud of your principled stand, Mr. Kassing? Does it occur to you that people dying from a blood shortage will do absolutely nothing to convince the FDA to change its policy, as long as it still believes that it is necessary to protect the blood supply?

Kassing's action is no more nor less than an attempt to hold a gun to the heads of sick and injured area residents of all ages in the vain belief that it will change the minds of policy-makers in Washington, D.C. His protest is irresponsible, and unethical under any analysis. It isn't even effective as "ends justify the means" utilitarianism, because his means will cause harm to bystanders without accomplishing his ends. That makes it more than reckless. That makes it stupid as well.