The National Marrow Donor Program

Sometimes we educated folks become aware of problems in our society because we keep up on the news and have high level conversations with our brilliant peers and colleagues (of which I am fortunate to have many!). It can be hard to know where to put your time, energy, and money. It is, of course, most difficult to give something of yourself.

When disease or strife affects you personally or someone you love, though, you realize how easy it is or might have been to help out if only we all had more knowledge about how to go about doing it. So, let me make you aware of a problem and help you understand how to go about doing something about it.

In patients with leukemia and some immune deficiency diseases, the stem cells in the bone marrow malfunction, producing an excessive number of defective or immature blood cells. These interfere with the production of normal blood cells, accumulate in the bloodstream and may invade other tissues.

Large doses of chemotherapy are required to destroy the abnormal stem cells and abnormal blood cells. This destroys normal cells found in the bone marrow as well. A bone marrow transplant enables physicians to treat these diseases with aggressive chemotherapy by allowing replacement of the diseased or damaged bone marrow after the chemotherapy treatment. The transplant is often necessary to save the patient's life, and the new bone marrow infused into the patient must match the genetic makeup of the patient's own marrow as perfectly as possible.

What can you do? JOIN THE REGISTRY. It does take a little time and a little money, but you can save someone's life.

For numerous reasons, people of color have an especially difficult time finding a match. Thank you, Andrea, for taking this issue to heart and for raising it with me. I hope together that we can make a difference.

On a similar note, please consider giving blood. Only 5% of eligible donors in the U.S. give, while someone here needs blood every 2 seconds. Why wait?