Kara McGee, associate professor, was interviewed for "As a blood shortage unfolds in NC, many gay and bisexual men are still barred from donating" by Elizabeth Thompson for North Carolina Health News.

Excerpt

Lee Storrow was a proud regular platelet donor for years, a service to the community he began after a representative spoke to his biology class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about the importance of donating.

But Storrow became instantly ineligible when he had sex with a man.

At the time, more than a decade ago, Storrow was immediately barred from donating at all, regardless of how often or when he had had sex. From 1983 until 2015, the FDA recommended blood establishments turn away all men who had had sex with men after 1977. The rule was put in place to prevent the population hardest hit by the AIDS crisis from unknowingly donating blood containing the virus, as it became clear that the blood-borne disease could be spread between men who had sex with one another.

As time went on, blood donations were screened more effectively, and many gay men began to practice safer sex, nonetheless the rule remained in place for decades.