Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

amitguptaneedsyou.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 247 posts

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#51

Post by jarek »

freemarketteddy wrote: post #9

I am a south asian male living in the US.I tried to sign up as a donor.Here is my experience. >Your password needs to be between 8 and 15 characters long, must contain at least 1 number and 1 letter and cannot contain spaces. Seriously WTF....I am sure half of the people who wanted to sign up did not just for this bs! Okay chill...password abcd...... > In the past 5 years have you taken money or drugs in exchange for…

> (Men only) In the past 5 years have you had sex, even once with another male?

If I was going through this process, I'd answer yes even if not true purely out of spite.

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#52

Post by cpher »

freemarketteddy wrote: post #9

I am a south asian male living in the US.I tried to sign up as a donor.Here is my experience. >Your password needs to be between 8 and 15 characters long, must contain at least 1 number and 1 letter and cannot contain spaces. Seriously WTF....I am sure half of the people who wanted to sign up did not just for this bs! Okay chill...password abcd...... > In the past 5 years have you taken money or drugs in exchange for…

In the past 5 years have you taken money or drugs in exchange for sex?.. (Men only) In the past 5 years have you had sex, even once with another male?

In the U.S., if you donate blood you are always asked this question, so this is completely acceptable. Do you really want the donation pool potentially contaminated by the HIV virus?

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#53

Post by k3dz »

kevinelliott wrote: post #43
qq66 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not ignoring those people. By signing up for the registry you can be matched against anyone who needs it. Whether Amit finds a donor or not (fingers crossed) his drive to get people tested will help other South Asian leukemia patients.

I am ignoring those people. Amit's high profile presence has made me think about the problem more, but I have not gone out of my way to see if any other people might be in need. Sure, my registration in the database will help to match me against other people in need, but it doesn't inform me of people who are in need that I don't match. See, that's what I mean. I feel guilty that I can't tell others about the thousan…

thinking along these lines, around 6 million children under five die in developing countries each year from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases.

[1] http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#54

Post by ataggart »

daenz wrote: post #32
ataggart wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Amit could pay some criminal organization for that service right now ; the abduction itself is illegal either way. Allowing for cash incentives would serve to reduce the quantity of unfulfilled demand from which black markets -- and the criminal organizations which supply them -- emerge. At the very least, such incentives would mean far more people listed in donor registries, the dearth of which is the very probl…

> But Amit could pay some criminal organization for that service right now If he could, why hasn't he then? In the link you pasted, why did so many people die awaiting transplants if was able to be obtained illegally right now? Surely they didn't want to die. I'm not sure I want to live in a world where the economically oppressed are pressured financially to give up body parts to the wealthy in order to survive. Just…

>If he could, why hasn't he then?

I would suspect that he has some moral compunction against kidnapping people and killing them for their body parts.

Regardless, you now seem to be implying the opposite claim from earlier. Is it that no longer prohibiting voluntary sales of organs (e.g., bone marrow) would result in an increase in such abductions/killings, or is it that such killings don't seem to happen despite the prohibition?

>I'm not sure I want to live in a world where the economically oppressed are pressured financially to give up body parts to the wealthy in order to survive.

Would it be morally preferable to only allow people who aren't "economically oppressed" to sell their bone marrow?

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#55

Post by mahyarm »

jules wrote: post #7
rorrr wrote: post #3

Why doesn't he simply offer money? If I needed to survive, I'd offer something like all my savings, plus 50% of my net salary for 10 years.

Because that is illegal. In the US, there is the National Organ Transplant Act which forbids paying for organs. In this law, bone marrow is considered an organ. > It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce. > [...] > The term ''human organ'' means the hu…

Why not go to the region of india where he's most likely to get a match, and give 10 dollars to people there for checking, and another 5000 to a match that goes through and get the surgery done in india?

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#56

Post by sax »

Here is a thought: Is there a correlation between bone marrow match and genetic closeness? If there is, it would be a good idea to specifically target people who are from the same community as Amit back in India as well as in the US.

In Indian society, marriage is often within tightly knit communities. What if we track-down people who share second names with Amit's Father and Mother (maiden second name). Would then, the probably of finding a match in such people increase?

Thoughts?

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#57

Post by [deleted] »

freemarketteddy wrote: post #9

I am a south asian male living in the US.I tried to sign up as a donor.Here is my experience. >Your password needs to be between 8 and 15 characters long, must contain at least 1 number and 1 letter and cannot contain spaces. Seriously WTF....I am sure half of the people who wanted to sign up did not just for this bs! Okay chill...password abcd...... > In the past 5 years have you taken money or drugs in exchange for…

[deleted]

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#59

Post by homosaur »

kevinelliott wrote: post #43
qq66 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not ignoring those people. By signing up for the registry you can be matched against anyone who needs it. Whether Amit finds a donor or not (fingers crossed) his drive to get people tested will help other South Asian leukemia patients.

I am ignoring those people. Amit's high profile presence has made me think about the problem more, but I have not gone out of my way to see if any other people might be in need. Sure, my registration in the database will help to match me against other people in need, but it doesn't inform me of people who are in need that I don't match. See, that's what I mean. I feel guilty that I can't tell others about the thousan…

Everything helps. Before Amit's illness blew up, I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as a marrow registry or that it was actually pretty simple to donate compared to other organ donation programs, many of which require you to face huge risk or being dragged in a bag. Just let people know occasionally. I feel your frustration at the great masses that fall through the cracks, but if you can get just a few people to sign up for the registry, there's a good chance that one of them could someday save a life and you'd be part of that, too.

Re: Amit Gupta hasn't found a marrow transplant match; today's your last chance.

#60

Post by sax »

Irfaan wrote: post #22

I really do wish this reminder had came sooner; I have the swab kit sitting on my desk, waiting for a free moment for me to swab and send. While I'm obviously still going to send it in, I was really hoping to help Amit. :(

It takes not more than 120 seconds to swab, stick the provided bar-codes on the 4 buds and stick the buds back into the provided casing. You then slip the case into the postage paid envelope and leave it on your outgoing mail for USPS to pick it up tomorrow.

I did this a couple of weeks ago. Just do it and be done with.

Post reply on HN