West Michigan Man Rejected As Organ Donor Because He's Gay

GRAND RAPIDS – A gay man on the west side of the state seeking to donate one of his kidneys to a child in need has been rejected as a possible candidate due to his sexuality, WZZM reports.
Davin Risk completed a series of preliminary tests at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital and was medically cleared to be a donor when the family of a child in need rejected his organ because it was coming from a "high risk donor."
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention requires all those seeking to add their name as a donor fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions asks if the male-identified donor has had sex with another man since 1977. Since Risk is an openly gay male he checked yes, designating him as as high risk donor.
All donor recipients are informed as to why the organ comes from a high risk donor and two days later Risk received a phone call that the potential family had decided to not move forward with his donation.
"That was hard. It was actually the only time in my life that I had felt that less-than feeling that so many people in the gay community have stories about and I was never able to relate. That was really what I was being told. I'm medically cleared, the entire surgical team signed off on this, but because of my sexuality I was less than appropriate for their child. And that hurt, a lot," Risk told WZZM news.
Risk isn't giving up and is also registered with C.S. Mott's Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan and remains on the donor list for Helen DeVos Children's Hospital. He hopes that DeVos Children's Hospital will amend their survey so that the gay community is not specifically called out on the grounds of sexual behavior.