FDA considers lifting ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men

On Jan. 27, the FDA proposed easing restrictions for blood donations from gay and bisexual men. Photo courtesy of the Manchester City Library via Flickr.

By Sarah Grinnell ’26

Staff Writer

LGBTQ+ activists had reason to celebrate on Friday, Jan. 27, as the Food and Drug Administration initiated a proposal to change long-standing restrictions on gay and bisexual men’s blood donation, Smithsonian reported. According to an NBC News Article, this ban, which was first implemented during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, prohibited any man who had had sex with at least one other man within three months of donation from giving blood.

The current draft of the proposal consists of what the New York Post describes as “gender-inclusive, individual risk-based questions,” which would make qualifications for donation dependent on sexual activity rather than orientation. This would measure the risk of HIV transmission equally against all identities, instead of targeting a single group or gender. As Smithsonian explained, in 1985 the FDA indefinitely banned any man who had sex with another man since 1977 from donating blood. The updated guidelines would mean anyone of any gender who has had only one sexual partner in the past three months is eligible to donate blood. 

According to Smithsonian, the FDA has said if the potential donors have engaged in anal sex, had a new sexual partner, or had more than one sexual partner within the last three months, they would be subject to questioning about their recent sexual activity and instructed to wait another three months before donating. The New York Post reported that these new guidelines are based on sexual practice, meaning that women will be impacted by donor restrictions for the first time. According to the New York Post, those in monogamous relationships will be eligible to donate blood regardless of sexual affiliation or gender. 

According to NBC, bans will remain in effect for people who have tested positive for HIV and take medication to treat it. Additionally, those taking oral medications to prevent infection, such as PrEP, must abide by a three month “deferral period” before they can donate, and those taking injectable PrEP would have to wait two years after their most recent injection before being permitted to give blood, Smithsoniam detailed. PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis, is a pill which prevents HIV from settling into the body before it can spread and is typically taken before sex or under other circumstances where infection could be likely, WebMD says.

The proposed guidelines have developed in part due to the drop-off in the number of blood donations seen at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Smithsonian said. With eased restrictions, the number of donors contributing to the national blood supply could increase significantly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many blood centers have not had enough blood to last even two days, and one fifth of all blood centers have had a one day supply or less, Smithsonian explained. The new proposal hopes to amend this situation. A report from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that lifts on donor bans for men who have sex with men would increase the annual blood supply by two to four percent.

Tony Morrison, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, has commented on this development in an NPR report, saying, “[t]hese changes are 40-plus years in the making, and they’re a tremendous leap forward in elevating science over stigma.” 

However, for some, the guidelines still leave something to be desired — especially where the restrictions around PrEP are concerned. As Jose Abrigo, HIV project director for the advocacy group Lambda Legal points out in an AP News article, “[w]e must be conscious to not further stigmatize these safe sex practices and uplift individuals taking precautions.” Claudia Cohn, chief medical officer for the nonprofit Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies, echoed this statement in a Washington Post article, saying, “keeping the blood supply safe is paramount, but it is also important to move forward so that we are not excluding a group of donors who could be perfectly safe.” 

According to the New York Post, the responses to the proposal have been overwhelmingly positive, with many eagerly anticipating the fruition of FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf’s promise to “use the best science [to maintain] a safe and adequate supply of blood and blood products in the U.S.,” while preventing further discrimination against any “gender or sexual orientation.”

Death of Atlanta protester sparks climate activism debate

Photo of Atlanta Police car, courtesy of jobsforfelonshub at Flickr.com.

By Sarah Grinnell ’26

Staff Writer

Content Warning: This article discusses police brutality and racialized violence.

On Jan. 21, 2023, peaceful protests on the streets of downtown Atlanta saw widespread demonstrations following the police killing of 26-year-old environmental activist Tortuguita earlier in the week, NPR reported. According to CBS News, in the wake of anti-police protests, vandalism, assaults on officers and a myriad of arrests, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has officially issued a state of emergency.

The activist, whose pronouns were they/it, was a “forest defender” associated with the grassroots organization Defend the Atlanta Forest, CBS described. According to Fox5Atlanta, in September 2021 the forested land was leased out to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build a facility. Since then, this network has been fighting against the construction of a new $90 million public safety training facility for the Atlanta Police Department, which the activists dub “Cop City,” ABC News said.

On the Defend the Atlanta Forest website, members of the movement describe their motivation as being driven by the fact that “climate change and police violence are two of the most pressing issues affecting our society today, and they will only worsen if this facility is built.” According to CBS, the project requires the clearing of sizable portions of the surrounding Weelaunee Forest — which the activists emphasize is an ecosystem of “wetlands that filter rainwater and prevent flooding” and a rare “breeding ground for many amphibians in the region.” Additionally, the project would result in the expansion of law enforcement, another major concern of the activists. According to ABC, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms asserted that the facility will “help boost morale, retention and recruitment of our public safety personnel,” ensuring that officers “are receiving 21st-century training, rooted in respect and regard for the communities they serve.” However, the activists argue the training facility “would not help the city’s crime problem and further hurt relations between police and communities of color,” Fox5Atlanta reported. 

Atlanta local and Mount Holyoke student Molly Malloy ’26 is no stranger to the notoriety of the Atlanta Police Department, they explained in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. According to Malloy, the deadly altercation between Tortuguita and the state trooper “sadly isn’t surprising.” They went on to explain that “policing in Atlanta has historically been racist, frightening and threatening, and this has been evidenced even further by recent tragedies like the murder of Rayshard Brooks at the hands of the Atlanta Police Department.” Brooks was a 27-year-old man who was shot and killed by the Atlanta police in a Wendy’s parking lot in June of 2020, as reported by 11Alive Atlanta. “This training environment would be a slap in the face to [people from Atlanta]who have made their stance clear that defunding the police and reducing the police force is what the people want,” Malloy said.

According to NPR, resistance to the training center by the forest defenders has been going on for over a year now, taking shape in camping out on platforms built in the surrounding tree cover, as well as staking out the construction site of the facility. In December 2022, five activists were arrested with charges of “domestic terrorism,” and convicted of crimes including carjacking, destruction of property, arson and physical altercations with police officers, ABC detailed. 

These demonstrations culminated in a deadly apex on Wednesday’s raid when Tortuguita allegedly injured a police officer and was subsequently killed by other police officers nearby, Fox5Atlanta reported. Currently, there is no available first-hand account or body cam footage of the event, leaving the exact sequence of events largely unverified. According to NPR, the public response to this tragic turn has sparked anti-police demonstrations, with masked activists on Saturday initially gathering peacefully to remember Tortuguita, but soon throwing rocks and fireworks at buildings linked to the Atlanta Police Foundation, shattering windows and lighting a police cruiser on fire. Three businesses sustained damage in the protests, ABC News said.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was quoted in an ABC article saying “those who break the law with no regard for those harmed by their actions will face justice, and I am grateful for these arrests.” However, according to ABC News, the protesters say “what is taking place is a classic example of tyrannical government overreach” and they believe “the public [had] a right to defend its interests.” As Malloy said, “as long as Georgia has a governor like Brian Kemp, the government will always be hostile against progressive agendas.” In Malloy’s view, this leaves activists with few options to demand change in a way that is seen as responsible.

Mount Holyoke Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Olivia Aguilar has provided some of her thoughts on the role of climate activism and whether or not there can be a ‘wrong’ way to go about it. “I think arguing about a binary of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ forms of activism about very complicated issues can be tricky and potentially misleading,” Aguilar said. While Aguilar emphasized that “climate activism takes many forms,” she also brought up the fact that “there is a lot of activism that doesn’t receive as much attention” and went on to say that “protests, strikes, corporate disruption, sit-ins, lawsuits and civil disobedience” — the tactics used in Atlanta — are some of the more dramatic tactics that activists use. 

Malloy took a similar viewpoint, positing that climate activism is often “a cry for help towards an issue that feels utterly hopeless on an individual level.” In facing such desperate global situations as the climate crisis, Malloy points out that “people are forced to watch and grow fearful and angry as their futures are decided by … governments and corporations that never put the best interests of humanity first.” Therefore, they say that “extreme methods of climate activism are seen to some as the only option because the media will only take notice of fiascos that will garner attention and views.” Thus, Malloy suggests “if the ‘wrong’ way to some is the only option left and might lead to change, it’ll have to be the new ‘right’ way.”

When describing a future where the measures the forest defenders had to take to be heard are no longer necessary, Aguilar stressed that “environmental activism has been going on for centuries, but it is often politicians and influential corporations that impede progress on environmental action.” Aguilar believes that “environmental action has to affect policies and the pocketbooks of big Oil and Gas to be effective.” In her opinion, the best that citizens can do “is to work hard at having a government that is not hostile or unresponsive to our agendas” by taking their grievances to the ballot box. If this can be achieved, then Aguilar believes “questions about violence,” which enshroud the tragic cases of activists like Tortuguita, “won’t be necessary.”

New FDA proposal hopes to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates

Johnson&Johnson COVID-19 vaccines at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, N.Y., March 3, 2021. Photo by Army Sgt. Sebastian Rothwyn, Army National Guard.

By Lily Benn ’24 

Staff Writer

On Jan. 26, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration of the United States held a meeting to discuss future plans for public health and the administration of COVID-19 vaccines. According to PBS NewsHour, the committee of 21 FDA members voted unanimously to approve the strategy of implementing an annual COVID-19 vaccination, allowing for people of all vaccination statuses to be vaccinated every year. This new system would no longer be dependent on keeping track of the number of primary vaccinations and boosters an individual has received, an article from AP News explains. The online committee meeting included information from an immunologist, Matthew Woodruff, who studies and publishes research on immune responses to COVID-19.

The AP News article goes on to state that while over 80 percent of Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19 with at least one dose, the newest Omicron variant booster approved in August 2022 has only reached about 16 percent of those eligible. As boosters become less popular among Americans, FDA scientists have supported a transition to an annual vaccination model, citing that many Americans have preexisting immunity from COVID-19 due to previous vaccination, infection or both. A news broadcast from WKMG News 6 ClickOrlando by Julie Broughton explains this news, but reports on counterpoints such as “critics” who believe that not enough data exists to sufficiently explain the higher immunity that the FDA has been using to back this new annual vaccination proposal.

This new system would go into effect once approved and backed by the Center for Disease Control, according to an article from PBS NewsHour. This new vaccine would likely be bivalent — or target multiple strains — as COVID-19 evolves. Thus, it would be able to target both the current dominant variant, Omicron, and further strains. Similar to the widely recognized influenza vaccine, it would be reevaluated each year and changed to target new mutations of the spike protein, the article explains.

According to a timeline put out by Mayo Clinic, vaccines targeting various influenza viruses have had a similar history, where pandemics and outbreaks led to widely recognized annual vaccines recommended for the general public. Influenza pandemics occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1958, 1968, the 1970s, and 2009, according to Mayo Clinic. The first introduction of an influenza vaccine recommendation was made in 1960 by the U.S. Public Health Service for people who were at high risk of influenza complications. By 1968, researchers began the development of specific influenza strain vaccines as a new pandemic spread. The article cites that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a part of the CDC, introduced a recommendation in 2010 that all people aged 6 months and older be vaccinated against influenza annually. By 2019 and 2020, Mayo Clinic reports that annual influenza vaccines have prevented about 7.5 million infections and illnesses. 

According to AP News, the FDA hopes that their new vaccine implementation strategy will increase vaccination rates worldwide, as this strategy would both simplify information and increase health for the general public.

Gretha Thunberg arrested during protest of a German coal mine

Greta Thunberg. Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons (Stefan Muller).

By Diksha Batra ’26

Staff Writer

Over the last month, Greta Thunberg has been arrested twice for protesting the expansion of a coal mine in the German village of Lützerath, according to CNN. Most recently, she was arrested on Tuesday, Jan. 17. A spokesperson for the German police told CNN that “Thunberg had been the main speaker at the rally on Saturday and had ‘surprisingly’ returned to protest on Sunday when she was detained the first time and then again on Tuesday.”

Greta Thunberg is a 20-year-old environmental activist from Stockholm, Sweden. After learning about the issue of climate change in 2011 at age eight, “Thunberg successfully urged her parents to change their lifestyle to lower the family’s carbon footprint, such as adopting veganism and ending plane travel,” according to an article from Iowa State University. Thunberg started her career in late 2018 when she “demonstrated outside the Swedish parliament and began giving speeches to protest inaction against climate change,” the article said. Thunberg inspired students worldwide to protest in their communities, leading to the development of “a school climate strike movement called Fridays for Future,” which went on to include multi-city protests in which more than one million students participated. 

According to Context news, Thunberg’s work led to her being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. In the same year, she was named “one of the world’s most influential people by Time magazine.” According to Context, Thunberg responded with a tweet that read “Now I am speaking to the whole world.” 

Her work has awarded her with many honors, including titles and money. However, Thunberg donates all money she wins from prizes to different organizations. According to Context news, Thunberg donated “a $100,000 award she received to UNICEF to buy soap, masks and gloves to protect children from the coronavirus pandemic” in April 2020. In July 2020, she donated the $1 million in prize money from the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity to charity. Additionally, she has donated about $120,000 to the WHO foundation to support the vaccine-sharing plan, Context reported.  

Her work towards fighting for environmentalist causes has continued, most recently with her protest of the Lützerath coal mine. According to CBS news, Thunberg was first detained by the German police on Jan. 13, 2023. CBS reported that “Thunberg was near the German village of Lützerath, where an energy company is seeking to demolish the remains of what they say is an abandoned town to make way for the mine’s expansion.” Video recorded by Reuters shows police officers picking Thunberg up and carrying her by her arms and legs away from the sit-in.  

According to CNN, many activists have been in Lützerath for more than two years, “occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted, most by 2017, to make way for the lignite coal mine.” Lützerath has been the center of attention for climate activists because of “its position on the edge of the opencast lignite coal mine, Garzweiler II.” This has faced criticism from climate groups, because “lignite is the most polluting type of coal, which itself is the most polluting fossil fuel” according to CNN. Because of the expansion of the mines, many surrounding villages have been destroyed. 

CNN reported that due to the success of Germany’s Green Party in the 2021 federal elections, “some had hoped the expansion would be canceled,” but the expansion continued its course. In October 2022, the government came to an agreement with RWE, the power company behind the mine, that “saved several villages,” but Lützerath was not protected by the deal. In addition, RWE agreed to phase-out coal energy production starting in 2030.

The deal with RWE became a cause for dissatisfaction with the Green Party. The Party, which supported the deal, stated that the mine expansion was necessary to relieve the current energy crisis in Germany, and denied that expansion of the mine would lead to higher emissions. In an interview with CNN, a recent Green Party supporter commented that “it’s such an absurd and catastrophic scenario that Germany, the country where everyone else thinks we have green [policies], is destroying a village to burn coal in the middle of the climate crisis.” 

While protesting, Thunberg “was one of several who ‘rushed towards the ledge,’ presumably referring to the brink of mine” according to CBS. The police stopped Thunberg and other protesters, carrying them “out of the immediate danger area to establish their identity,” a police spokesperson told Reuters. In the video recorded by Reuters, Thunberg can be seen laughing while still being held by police. CBS reported that Thunberg confirmed the detainment the next day. She wrote on Twitter, “Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening. Climate protection is not a crime.”