Tackles Gay Blood Ban

It's been more than a week since the Department of Health and Human Services's Advisory Committee on Blood Safety ruled that gay men still can't donate blood, but that hasn't silenced debate on the issue.

On a Tuesday segment of The View, guests D.L. Hughley and journalist Thomas Roberts (host of The Advocate On Air) joined regular hosts Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Sherri Shepard in discussing the ruling in light of a recent Slate.com article.

The Slate piece questioned whether other groups with higher incidences of HIV infection should also be banned, citing, for example, that African-American women have an HIV rate nearly 18 times higher than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control (the FDA, a subagency of HHS, already bars persons born in sub-Saharan Africa from donating blood).

In a unanimous vote, the blood safety advisory committee also called the policy for men who have sex with men (MSM) "suboptimal," however, and recommended that distinctions be made between low- and high-risk potential gay donors in an upcoming report to the assistant secretary of HHS.