Twitter Nixes Onsite Blood Drives Over FDA's Ban on Gay, Bi Men

Twitter will no longer host blood drives at its headquarters over the Federal Drug Administration's decades-old ban that prohibits gay and bisexual men from donating blood, the International Business Times reports.

The San Francisco-based social media giant made the announcement to the newspaper Wednesday in a statement.

"These are the only policies that the FDA has based on a person's identification and not any type of risky behavior that they're engaged in," Jim Halloran, Twitter's Associate Manager of Sales Operations and President of TwitterOpen, Twitter's LGBT employee resource group, said. "Twitter took a very bold stance."

The FDA implemented the ban in 1983, which prevents men who have sex with other men from donating blood. The controversial policy was put in place in response to the U.S.'s AIDS crisis.

Twitter officials decided to take a stand against the national policy after a gay employee was turned away from a blood drive at the company's headquarters. The worker filed a complaint with human resources, sparking Twitter to no longer host onsite blood drives after April 2015, the company told the International Business Times.

"We made the choice to take a company stand against some of our employees being turned away from donating blood and will channel our efforts into education about this issue until this unnecessary and discriminatory policy is changed," Brian "Skip" Schipper, Twitter's Vice President of Human Resources and the Executive Sponsor of TwitterOpen, told the publication.

Twitter made its announcement about the move Wednesday, when it was named one of the "Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality" by the Human Rights Campaign.

The website has also filed a public comment with the FDA and TwitterOpen has also supported a petition to "stop discriminating and screen male blood donors equally."

"We strongly urge the FDA to reconsider this draft rule, remove the restrictions on donations from MSM [men who have sex with men], and redraft safety regulations that are based on legitimate behavioral risk factors," said Colin Crowell, Twitter's Vice President of Global Policy, in a letter submitted to the FDA in July, according to the International Business Times.

Earlier this year, the FDA considered altering its policy by allowing men who have sex with other men to donate blood if they have abstained from sex with men for at least a year.