After about a hundred days of friends registering & campaigning, chemo, drives, press appearances, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr posts, I found a donor:
HN played a huge part in making that happen. I want to say thanks not just for me, but for all the others that gotten helped through our efforts in the past two years alone.
Reminder: It's easy to register, and easy to save someone:
Awesome, be neat to know how many lives were saved this way overall! I also registered because of you!
I still have this great idea that NBMR/marrow.org should partner with 23andme.com, but I didn't get anywhere trying to contact someone at marrow.org about it (though I wrote you to ask for your contact there and sent an email, thanks for quick reply!). Still think it could be awesome and save a ton more lives (gist of the idea was they both need to run DNA sequencing, and 23andme could offer a discount or something to anyone who also agrees to register for marrow donors list), but someone told me the sequencing needs may be different for each of their needs, and perhaps they already considered the idea themselves... but in case you know anyone else to talk to about it, would be awesome to get more people off the sidelines with a small 'bribe' :-)
Agreed it'd be awesome to get them working together. Anne Wojcicki had reached out and I had a call with her and a couple other folks at 23andme during my 100 days isolation period after the transplant.
They seemed interested, I'm not sure how far it got. I'm guessing privacy issues/conflicting priorities got in the way, but I'll drop her a line to see if they're still thinking about it.
One of the things I learned on HN back when Amit's story first came up was that many people who register as donors for a specific person end up declining to make a donation when they get contacted in a different context a few months/years later, and that's really a shame - so huge kudos to Scott for going ahead with this after all that time, because that's a crucial part of the equation.
Yeah, that was the first thing I checked for as well. Note that the restriction is specifically on MSM, not 'gay people'.
There is a growing body of medical groups pushing for a relaxation of the indefinite deferral period for MSM, including the American Red Cross and America Blood Centers. The deferral period in some other countries is less strict, down to a year in the EU.
I mean, AFAIK it really is more prevalent, however heterosexual monogamous people anyway tend to have HIV, hepatitis/etc, so blood needs to be tested anyway - and if it's tested, who cares if you have to throw out an extra bag of blood if you gain ten extra bags by allowing them to donate?
IIRC, there was an actual incident of people getting HIV/AIDS from a transfusion which lead to the introduction of the ban.
Unfortunately, the number of homosexuals in the world isn't high enough to offset the number of people who would stop donating blood from homophobia if an organization changed their stance on this issue.
I'm not willing to let masses of people die just so that I can be "politically correct" about homosexuals being able to donate blood.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3083770
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3149337
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3297091
After about a hundred days of friends registering & campaigning, chemo, drives, press appearances, Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr posts, I found a donor:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3482119
HN played a huge part in making that happen. I want to say thanks not just for me, but for all the others that gotten helped through our efforts in the past two years alone.
Reminder: It's easy to register, and easy to save someone:
- http://bethematch.org/Support-the-Cause/Donate-bone-marrow/J...