According to some top experts in Canada, gay men should not be barred from donating blood. In an article in Tuesday’s Canadian Medical Association Journal, they wrote that the old policy of Canadian Blood Services to decline donations from gay men in the fear that they will transmit HIV is obsolete.

The chance of infected blood getting into the system is almost zero, as "highly sensitive" testing for HIV is now regularly available. He further argued that this life-time ban on gays is discriminatory in nature.

As per the Canadian Blood Services policy, any man who has had sex with a man since 1977, even once, is "deferred" from giving blood for good.

Wainberg said, “We're obviously not saying men who are infected should donate blood; they clearly should not. The science has advanced by hundreds of miles. Yet our policies are still in a time warp”. He insisted that this policy needs to be updated, as efficient blood testing is now available.

Wainberg and his colleagues, including Canadian AIDS expert Dr. Norbert Gilmore, shared that if gay men are included into the donor system, this could increase the amount of blood available significantly.

Ron Vezina, a Spokesman for Canadian Blood Services, on the other hand rejected the argument that blood donated by gay men would lessen blood shortages. He said, “There hasn¹t been a blood shortage in Canada in recent history”.