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Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

danshapiro.com

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Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#91

Post by PotatoEngineer »

AndyKelley wrote: post #27
nknight wrote: post #3

Ouch. To the extent it's still relevant in the modern world, our postal system really needs to work a little more like the phone system. I can be pretty much anywhere in the US (or really, the world, if I want to pay international roaming fees), someone can dial my well-known phone number, and my phone will ring. For ordinary first class mail, I should be able to generate unique ID numbers on the USPS's website, and…

Cool idea. Simpler one: the marrow donor place could collect email address instead of home address.

That wouldn't have helped me when I was in college; my college stopped supporting my email address after I left. (They also had this weird email client called Simian that you had to use, and it wouldn't let you read your email until it had authenticated.)

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#92

Post by cop359 »

danshapiro wrote: post #13
timr wrote: post #7

"At the time, the only way to donate marrow was to basically have someone drill holes in your bones and drain your skeleton, which kind of terrified me. Nowadays, of course, most donations require nothing more than sitting still for a few hours with an IV watching television." That actually isn't really true. Marrow donations still require anesthesia and a surgical procedure. In the interest of providing full informa…

From your second link: PBSC donation is a non-surgical procedure done in an outpatient clinic. PBSC donors receive daily injections of a drug called filgrastim for five days, to increase the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream. Then, through a process called apheresis, a donor's blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remai…

From what I've heard, the long term consequences of the "filgrastim" stuff is unknown. It's a pretty intense drugs (it's basically causing your marrow to be release into your blood stream)

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#93

Post by alecbee »

Fantastic Story! I always love to see people helping each other.

After a visit to India earlier in the year, to oversee development of software for my new biz, I was awestruck at the conditions people were living in. Seeing this made me want to do something to help, and therefore decided to contribute a portion of every dollar earned to build water wells in developing countries for clean water.

I will definitely look into this as well to help...

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#94

Post by kelnos »

heimidal wrote: post #34
tomjen3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same shit for blood donations in Denmark. They got pretty unpopular when they asked for more donors because they feared a shortage but then turned away the gay men. And no, it is not for health issues because they don't turn away gay women. Of course you could register if you want to and then if called upon show up eagerly with your partner for moral support. Then flat out ask if they are going to kill thei…

tomjen3: Gay women are the lowest risk demographic when it comes to HIV contraction, so I don't take issue with their inclusion. The problem, as I see it, is that most countries place an unreasonable bias against _all_ gay men rather than _some_ gay men. The appropriate way to handle donor screenings is to ask about sexual behavior in general, such as whether or not you are monogamous, how many partners in the past y…

Unfortunately, the FDA is so afraid of alienating existing donors by asking them for a sexual history profile that they would rather stick to the status quo and continue excluding gays altogether.

Which could actually make sense. If (if!) it's correct that asking about sexual history would alienate existing donors, and if (if!) it would alienate enough to compromise the blood supply, it might be "safer" to keep the current rules in place instead of trying to be somehow more objectively "fair".

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#95

Post by ww520 »

sixtofour wrote: post #52
nknight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt the post office had much to do with tracking him down. My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever. It's far more likely that someone at the matching network did some googling. And I don't need a new phone number, that's kind of the point. I can switch providers and still keep my number. I can move to the other side of the country a…

I've wanted that for years from the post office: one address, your stuff follows you wherever, you never change your "address" you just update your location with the post office. I explained the idea to my first wife in the late seventies, and she thought I was solving a non-problem.

Some mailbox companies do that for you. People (esp old folks) living in RV traveling don't have physical address, so they set up one permanent address with a mailbox company to receive all incoming mails. The mailbox company would forward them to their current location. Whenever they stop at one place extensively, they contact the mailbox company to update the mail forward to the new location.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#96

Post by felipemnoa »

nknight wrote: post #10
there wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the story, the post office did better than any phone provider would. he moved to a new location, maybe years later, and a piece of mail still followed him to his new address. i'm sure the registry gets notified of forwarding address changes for people on their lists, so they could in theory keep up with you even if you moved a bunch of times (as long as you forwarded from at least your last address). if…

I seriously doubt the post office had much to do with tracking him down. My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever. It's far more likely that someone at the matching network did some googling. And I don't need a new phone number, that's kind of the point. I can switch providers and still keep my number. I can move to the other side of the country a…

>>My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever.

I do find this surprising as for me, forwarding requests have always worked as expected. Could be a management problem in your area.

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#97

Post by hyperbovine »

aplusbi wrote: post #78
Dove wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same reason they tested me for STDs when I got pregnant, even though I married a virgin as a virgin and we have been faithful forever. It's not about what you believe about yourself and your partner. It's about the statistics. Someone else's life is on the line. They need to be sure . Though I must admit, I'm surprised the policy is in place with marrow donations. With blood donations, sure, transfusions are…

It's not just about statistics. For blood donations, if I had unprotected sex with a different HIV infected partner every day for a year, then stopped doing this for a year and one day, I would be eligible to donate blood. If, however, I had sex with a man once in the last 30 years I am not eligible. Why is it more sensible to turn away gay people then it is to turn away people who have regularly exposed themselves t…

It's not. Her comment makes no sense, at least to me. Anyways, I am just curious, couldn't you just lie about your sexual orientation at the time of screening? I think it's awful that you should have to, but if your desire is to save lives, why let our backwards medical establishment get in the way? At the very least you could notify them if/when a match was found, and let the recipient decide...

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#98

Post by eridius »

aplusbi wrote: post #80
radu_floricica wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the math in another discussion in another forum, and it's actually sensible to turn away gay people. From their point of view the goal is to get as many blood donations as possible, while minimizing the risk of disease. They couldn't give a f*ck about anything else. Couldn't find all the numbers I was looking for, but it turns out 61% of infections in US are through male-to-male sexual contact. This probabl…

The problem isn't with the fact that they turn down gay men. The problem is that they turn down gay men while accepting people who have regularly exposed themselves to HIV, as long as they haven't done that within the past 12 months.

In case you haven't seen it, mpk has a response[1] which brings up a point I've never seen made before:

> All blood gets tested and though false negatives are still possible, most infections are statistically close enough to 100% detectable after 6 months.

This kind makes irrelevant all the outrage over them accepting blood from donors who have had wildly unsafe sex over 12 months ago. At this point it's only a matter of risk management surrounding the possibility of recent infection. You may say that in that case, it shouldn't matter if you had a same-gender sexual encounter 30 years ago, but this really just boils down to statistics, and having a same-gender sexual encounter puts you in an entirely different statistical category than people who restrict themselves to strictly heterosexual encounters.

[1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3240432

Re: Saving a Life is Easy, But I Didn't

#100

Post by chronomex »

mindslight wrote: post #63
nknight wrote: post #3

Ouch. To the extent it's still relevant in the modern world, our postal system really needs to work a little more like the phone system. I can be pretty much anywhere in the US (or really, the world, if I want to pay international roaming fees), someone can dial my well-known phone number, and my phone will ring. For ordinary first class mail, I should be able to generate unique ID numbers on the USPS's website, and…

AFAICT, mail forwarding is done by the local post office that would have delivered the mail. So mail headed to CA gets to your local CA post office, gets a yellow sticker on it, and gets stuck back in the mail. Mail originating in MA, destined for a CA, and forwarded to MA, does indeed cross the country twice. And routing loops loop , true story. How do they submit forwarding updates to remote post offices? Well, the…

I thought mail forwarding was done at the initial address scan, not the final address scan. I did a bunch of research on this a few months ago, but unfortunately I can't find a source right now.
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