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frollicking in your life
Would You Lie to Save a Life?

I gave blood at Downey House two weeks ago, as many of you did also. There is no better feeling than knowing that you probably saved a life. In another week, on Wednesday October 25, we are going to have another chance to do so. We can register to donate bone marrow thanks to the generosity of President Bennett and Dean Hill and the hard work of many
Wesleyan students.

Why register to donate bone marrow? Over 30,000 new patients a year are diagnosed with leukemia, aplastic anemia, and other life threatening blood diseases that are only treatable with bone marrow transplants. Because of the genetic specificity that is involved in the process, only 30% of the patients can find an identical match within their family. The rest relies on chance, and the more people that are registered, the more chances lives will be saved.

Usually, the process for registering in the National Marrow Donor Registry costs anywhere between $45 to $96 dollars, due to the differences in cost of the laboratories that carry out the tests and the level of tests that are done. But this time, Dean Hill and President Bennett are subsidizing all the cost no matter how much the final tab is. This means that students should take advantage of registering for absolutely no charge.

Registering is a rather easy process. Just have some form of identification available, two addresses of family members or friends that you will be in touch with until you are 60 years old, and approximately 10 minutes. The reason I mention 60 years old is because once you have committed to being in the registry, you should be prepared to be in it and keep in contact with the registry until you are 60. It would not be good for a match to be found and falsely raise the hope of a patient while the potential donor cannot be found because he or she has moved.

After answering the questionnaire prior to registering, the nurse will withdraw approximately 5 mL of blood from you, which takes just a few seconds, and you will barely feel anything except the fact that now you have the opportunity save a life or two in the future. Remember, registering does not mean you consent to unconditionally donating your bone marrow to anyone in the future. 

If a match is found after registering, the registry will contact you for more information. A full physical will be done, and if everything is fine, doctors will go ahead with the extraction of marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. Lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half, the procedure involves little incisions on the back that are so small even stitches are unnecessary. Like blood cells, marrow replenished itself, so giving away marrow is like giving away nothing.

It should be the duty and obligation of every student and faculty at Wesleyan to register, for leukemia and diseases of these sorts can unexpectedly happen to anyone at anytime, and the more people that register, the better chances there will be for a match between patients and potential donors.

However, there is a group of people who cannot fulfill this obligation even if they want to just because of the way they were born. Sexually active gay men. Men who have had sex with other men since 1977, even once.

This is because the FDA sees men who have had sex with other men as a high-risk group for HIV transmission. Just because the FDA decided so, a large chunk of our population cannot register to potentially save lives of leukemia victims who desperately need bone marrow. I wonder how many more lives would be saved if gay men would be eligible for donating bone marrow.

But should that even be the question? Maybe it does not matter how many more lives can be saved. Maybe as long as one more life can be successfully prolonged because people in the high-risk group can register, then it is good enough?

In addition to sexually active gay men, high-risk groups include intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs who have received clotting factor concentrates, or people who were born or have lived in many parts of Africa. Why reject all these people when they can  otentially save many more lives than they can potentially kill by spreading HIV, especially when most of them do not have the virus?

Exact figures of HIV carriers within these groups I do not have, but since extensive physical check-ups are necessary anyway before the actual marrow is transferred, then what is wrong with letting gay men and people in high-risk groups be potential donors? To reject these people because they are at high risk is just a lazy pretense.

Therefore, I ask each one of you who are supposedly in high-risk groups to lie in your questionnaire so as to be able to register in the National Marrow Donor Registry. Do so only, however, if you are certain you do not have HIV or AIDS. I am not advocating the spread of HIV. I am merely suggesting people who are perfectly eligible to save lives with their marrow to do so even if they are unfortunately and arbitrarily ostracized by the FDA.

I understand that my proposal might be as absurd to some of you as Prince William’s espousing of the evilness of genetically modified food. But for the dying patients out there, any rule limiting the chances for matching patients with donors is the only thing that is absurd.