The Red Cross is bringing an end to its previous restrictions of allowing gay and bisexual men to donate blood.
The rule, originally set in the 1980s during the HIV/AIDs crisis by the Food and Drug Administration, will end following longstanding efforts from medical and LGBTQ organizations that denounced the act as prejudicial, according to Axios.
Beginning this Monday, the Red Cross will move from a position of discriminating against blood donations based on sex or sexual orientation to a "gender-neutral" position where "all donors will answer the same questions regardless of gender or sexual orientation."
"The Red Cross celebrates" the FDA's updated final guidance as "significant progress and also recognizes there is more work to be done to make blood donation even more inclusive," the organization said.
In May, the FDA announced that the new regulations could expand the pool of eligible blood donors.
The Red Cross has reported that it supplies approximately 40% of the nation's blood and blood-related products. However, it has expressed concerns about significant shortages.
Moreover, according to Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., some of that blood supply may be tainted by the COVID-19 vaccines.
In a tweet, Kennedy writes, "Despite reports that COVID-19 vaccines cause blood abnormalities, the American Red Cross + FDA continue to brush off concerns that the massive vaccine campaign may have contaminated the country's blood supply."
The tweet links to an article from Kennedy's website outlining how the American Red Cross may be spreading "misinformation" while ignoring some "alarming" studies about the COVID-19 vaccines.
One such study the article cites, published in August, 2022, in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, described how Italian surgeons discovered "atypical clumping of red blood cells and the presence of 'extraordinarily anomalous structures and substances' of 'various shapes and sizes of unclear origin' in over 94% of symptomatic, COVID-19-vaccinated individuals whose blood they examined."
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