Emo Loredo walked into a Burk Hall classroom last April hoping to save lives.

But after a half-hour wait and several questionnaires, blood workers said he was ineligible to donate blood because he had been intimate with a man.

“I felt disappointed,” said the 24-year-old Loredo, a senior sociology and math major. “A gay person donating blood is no different from a straight person donating blood, considering all blood gets tested anyway.”

The reason for Loredo’s rejection is a controversy that pits blood organizations against the Food and Drug Administration. Under the FDA’s blood donor screening policy, men who have had sex with other men after 1977 are ineligible to give blood because they are considered to have an increased risk of HIV.

“We are disappointed that the FDA has not updated this antiquated policy to better reflect current science,” said Lisa Bloch, director of communications at Blood Centers of the Pacific, which ran the blood drive Loredo attended. Bloch said the centers depend on student donations for more than 15 percent of their blood supply.

“With new science and emerging diseases, we must be vigilant about making our blood supply as safe as possible. With that being said, there are a few policies that we think need to be updated. For example, the policy about males who have sex with other males,” Bloch said.

The American Red Cross, American Association of Blood Banks and America’s Blood Centers jointly asked the FDA last year to relax the restriction, allowing gay males to donate blood if they have not had sex with another man for at least one year.

“The major blood banks stated that this restriction was not scientifically warranted anymore,” said Sara O’Brien, spokesperson for the Northern California division of the American Red Cross.

The FDA announced May 26, however, that they would continue the lifetime restriction. Bloch said that although the decision dismayed her, she is optimistic that the FDA will change its policy soon.

No FDA representatives were available for comment, but according to its website, men who have had sex with other men form the largest group of HIV-positive blood donors and are considered to have a 60 percent greater risk of carrying HIV than the general population. Its guidelines also state that HIV-positive donors may not have signs of infection right away, and the restriction is meant to guard against this “window period.”

Some agencies argue that blood donation tests for HIV have become so advanced that they can detect it earlier, practically eliminating the window period. Nucleic acid testing, implemented in 1999, can identify HIV in a person before his or her body produces antibodies for the virus, according to the Red Cross and the Blood Centers of the Pacific’s websites. The odds of contracting HIV/AIDS from a blood transfusion are 1 in every 2 million, O’Brien said.

Albert Angelo, a health educator for SF State’s Student Health Services, said the restriction can seem discriminatory. “I am a gay male and, [if I were in charge of the policy,] I would look at more risky behavior and not a person’s identity,” he said.

“They have their reasons, [but] if a straight couple can have sex, they can transmit the same diseases that a gay couple can,” said Belinda Casillas, 24. The biology major said she was ineligible to donate blood last semester because she rode a tour bus through a rural town in Mexico.

Nationwide, there has been a major shortage of blood. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advises that blood centers have a 5 to 7 day supply of blood, but most Northern California centers only have a 1 to 3 day supply, said O’Brien.

“There is not enough blood in our inventory waiting to be used in an emergency like an earthquake or a plane crash,” O’Brien said.

Accurate numbers of donors turned away by the restriction are not available because some potential donors walk out after seeing it on the questionnaires, O’Brien said.