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

amitguptaneedsyou.com

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

#91

Post by cpher »

blahedo wrote: post #67
cpher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Do you really want the donation pool potentially contaminated by the HIV virus? This is FUD. Gender of partner as an HIV risk factor is now much less predictive than a number of other risk factors that they do not check for; it is especially insulting to monogamous couples whose HIV risk is negligible. (The Red Cross is especially odious in this regard, as they are still asking this question not as "in the past 5 y…

No, this is not FUD. This is a proxy for a pattern of behavior (unprotected sex with the same sex, sharing of needles, etc). They ask you these questions as a primary filter for determining who is at risk of transferring a disease. We still don't know everything about how the disease is transferred, but we know which behavior patterns lead to it.

And regarding the 1978 date, we still don't even know how long HIV can lay dormant in humans.

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

#92

Post by daenz »

kevinelliott wrote: post #27

I feel absolutely helpless. I hate this situation. I don't know anyone who qualifies, and I certainly don't. The idea that Amit may not find a donor furiously irritates me. What's worse, none of my Facebook and Twitter followers have relayed the message further the several times I've posted about it. Then there's the swab kit sign up form. Oh my, what a pain. And then the guilt sets in where I begin to think 'Why am…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths

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

#93

Post by SeoxyS »

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…

The sign up process was also a huge pain for me, but I mostly got through it. But the part that bugged me the most was how strongly they were trying to get me to donate money, too. I get that it takes $100 to process the application, but this feels like unpleasant upselling. If you're asking people to donate their bone marrow, which is a pretty big deal, don't try to make them pay for it, or make them feel bad if they chose not to.

Once you're signed up online, though, the registry is pretty painless. The cheek swabs were a lot more convenient than 23andme's massively annoying spit donation.

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

#95

Post by ismarc »

kevinelliott wrote: post #84
k3dz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yep, this is exactly where my guilt comes in. What am I doing to help any of those millions of starving children? Very little. So many people have told me throughout my life that I need to just ignore it, and you can't save the world. I can't help but think that's just their way of trying to invalidate any guilt of their own, even if they're right that it's not possible to help everyone everywhere. Though that's why…

No one can save the world, and no organization can save the world. People die, bad things happen and the measurable impact of any random person is zero. That's the simple facts of our existence. However, you can elevate yourself to where you have the ability to have more impact than a random person and you can direct your actions in a way that everyone you encounter is better for it (note that I say they are better for it and not that they think they are better for it). Those two things are how you have an actual impact because others follow suit, not because your individual contribution was overtly grand

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

#96

Post by eric-hu »

I went through the signup process a month or two ago, but got flat-rejected at the last step (after about half an hour of reading fine print).

The issue: I had temporary hair loss in high school, due to an autoimmune disease according to a dermatologist. I was never tested for it, and figured I could still get tested, but the signup process just stopped me.

I'm in the LA area and willing to drive somewhere to get tested for a match tonight if someone can shed more light on if/how I can do it.

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

#97

Post by lmkg »

earl wrote: post #77
jcr wrote: post #5

A good friend of mine, Eric Drew, survived two failed fully oblative bone marrow transplants (partial match) and was out of options, so he "qualified" for an experimental "Cord Blood Transplant" which cured his Acute Lyphoblastic Leukimia. I believe it was done through the University of Wisconsin, but I'm uncertain if the procedure has gotten out of research trials. If Amit runs out of options, he should look into it…

I think the term is an ablative and/or autologous bone marrow transplant. My father had this performed to treat type ii non hodgkins lymphoma. Essentially, if there is no donor, you can draw a patient's own bone marrow, attempt to treat it so that it has no cancerous cells, culture the hopefully cleansed bone marrow, kill all the patient's bone marrow in their body via high doses of chemo and/or radiation, then reimp…

> What these antiseptic descriptions mask is "killing a patient's bone marrow" is roughly equal to poisoning that person just a tiny bit shy of killing him or her.

That's a description of most cancer treatments, especially the traditional ones.

Cancer cells are so similar to normal healthy tissue, they're difficult to target with high specificity. Most treatments (especially chemo and radiation) work by killing cancer cells marginally better than they kill (most) normal cells. The targeting is getting better for both classes of treatment, but the collateral damage is still significant.

Killing all bone marrow cells indiscriminately sidesteps the targeting issue, with the trade-off that you effectively remove an entire vital organ. This is just as drastic, but in this particular case happens to be a surmountable obstacle.

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

#98

Post by adaml_623 »

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…

Please deal with your guilt by 'annoying' 10 other people and telling them/convincing them that signing up to the donor registry is very easy.

Alternately if you 'can't tell others about the thousands of people who are also in need' then yes you are guilty and should probably figure out something else useful for humanity that your conscience/selfulness lets you do.

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

#100

Post by jarek »

cpher wrote: post #91
blahedo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you really want the donation pool potentially contaminated by the HIV virus? This is FUD. Gender of partner as an HIV risk factor is now much less predictive than a number of other risk factors that they do not check for; it is especially insulting to monogamous couples whose HIV risk is negligible. (The Red Cross is especially odious in this regard, as they are still asking this question not as "in the past 5 y…

No, this is not FUD. This is a proxy for a pattern of behavior (unprotected sex with the same sex, sharing of needles, etc). They ask you these questions as a primary filter for determining who is at risk of transferring a disease. We still don't know everything about how the disease is transferred, but we know which behavior patterns lead to it. And regarding the 1978 date, we still don't even know how long HIV can…

Your grand-grandparent post quite emphatically is FUD. Being MSM is positively correlated with a pattern of behaviour that elevates risk of HIV. So is being a college student. So is serial monogamy. So is being a heterosexual male. Singling out one of these while making no attempt to break down the diverse group MSM by further detailing high-risk behaviour and black-marking it with an ominous question like "Do you really want the donation pool potentially contaminated by the HIV virus?" (who does?) is very much FUD against MSM as a whole.
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