Let's Help (Minorities) Defeat Leukemia

tonybgoode:

To aid him in his fight, Amit is going to need a bone marrow transfusion. Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.

This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.

How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.

…

Minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow registry, so getting more people to register could help save many other lives as well.

When my wife’s little sister (half-Filipina) was fighting leukemia, this was the elephant in the room — what if there are no marrow matches? There were no exact matches in the whole registry, and only two partials. Luckily for all of us, it worked out. Still, this is a hugely worthwhile effort, and not just for some dude on the Internet you’ve never heard of.