Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
Frank Bowe, long-time disability rights activist, has some useful ideas about strategizing by disabled communities for the upcoming US mid-term elections. The issue requires some subtlety because, as he points out, the disabled community is not as politically monolithic as many other “interest groups”, and so has less political clout as a body and is less easily approached or categorized by politicians seeking support.
Bowe tries to identify themes and issues of common interest to all in the disabled community, and offers a basic primer on electoral activism and on making connections with other communities with common interests. His post sets me to thinking about ways that other healthcare-interest communities could benefit from similar efforts. We surely need effective strategies in this benighted time.
A good idea seems to have reared its head at the FDA; it will be interesting to see what happens to it.
The FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee has responded favorably to a request initiated by the American Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks and America’s Blood Centers to revise its donor-deferral policies for men who have sex with other men, reducing the exclusionary period in which they cannot donate from lifetime to one year after their last homosexual contact - the same waiting period as for others who have experienced higher-risk sexual encounters.
Unfortunately, we know what happens to good ideas at the FDA, especially on sexual-health issues.
