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Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

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Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, perpetuates for life. It's called Chimerism. I'd be interested (obviously) in finding out what other implications this might have for me long term besides enabling me to life a life of crime. ;-)

I was gonna say, walking around with someone else's blood sounds like it'd make for an entertaining crime drama episode.

CSI: LA did an episode about it in its earlier seasons. (As in, back when it was good.)

This might be the one: http://www.csiguide.com/episodedetail.aspx?csi=157.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, perpetuates for life. It's called Chimerism. I'd be interested (obviously) in finding out what other implications this might have for me long term besides enabling me to life a life of crime. ;-)

Im sure CSI Miami have it covered.

Original CSI http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/miami/bloodlines.shtml

also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_chimerism_in_fiction

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#33
post #30
post #3

Thank God!

Oh no, I'm going to be that person. Thank science! (And also those people who participated in a campaign to help him get a match.) My mom was diagnosed with a rare variant of AML (APML or APL) in April 2011. When she was admitted to the hospital, she had at maximum one or two days left to live before she would have hemorrhaged to death without medical attention (no platelets). When APML was first discovered in 1957,…

The expression "Thank God!" could easily be intended to show thankfulness that medicine and this person's illness crossed paths now vs. 100 years ago.

Not to spark a religious debate, but this reaction seems to be common among the scientific community. Granted, it seems illogical for a god to be selectively-responsible for occurrences in one's life, but I don't think a lack of correlation is proof of anything necessarily. Some people believe in a deity who sparked the big bang and has done nothing more (a "hands-off" management style, if you will). Whether this merits praise/piousness, it's not my place to decide. But since nobody has the answer (and will probably never discover it), everyone's free to believe what they wish as long as it doesn't impose on others (a rare feat, I know).

FWIW, I am agnostic.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#34
post #25

Note that if you sign up with the donors.marrow.org registry in January, American Express is covering all the registry's costs (about $100 per new donor candidate), so it's a particularly good time to sign up.

Clickable link with Amex sponsorship details: http://marrow.org/Join/Join_Now/Join_Now.aspx

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, perpetuates for life. It's called Chimerism. I'd be interested (obviously) in finding out what other implications this might have for me long term besides enabling me to life a life of crime. ;-)

I was gonna say, walking around with someone else's blood sounds like it'd make for an entertaining crime drama episode.

While not a "crime drama", Chimerism is also the main diagnosis in an episode of House: http://house.wikia.com/wiki/Cane_%26_Able

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#36

> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…

Yes, my brother had a stem cell transplant using my stem cells. At one point a year after transplant he got some graft-vs-host disease and one of the first tests they do is a Chimerism test to see how much percent of his blood stem cells are actually mine. The way they do that is by comparing his blood to a base sample of mine. Or otherwise, they could compare his blood to his hair sample (which retains his old DNA), and see if its different. I'm obviously over simplifiying it, but as far as the crime situation some others are talking about on this thread, note that the identical footprint will only be in the DNA in blood. If you take skin/hair etc, it will still have the original DNA set.

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#37

> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…

I'm rather surprised that a bone marrow match wouldn't have the same blood type. I guess I shouldn't be though.

Edit: chimeracoder

Huh. :)

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#38

> At this point, my blood type changes to the blood type of my donor. And my blood will now have my donor’s DNA, not my own. That's actually really fascinating. This perpetuates for life? This would seem to imply that a person who's received a transplant will, thirty years later, be walking around with two separate sets of DNA, as the other cells in the body presumably would not change. Given that DNA is (indirectly)…

[deleted]

Re: Amit Gupta has found a 10/10 matched donor

#39
I found out while in a taxi cab this morning & I started crying. So thankful. So glad I could (maybe) help.

It's such a simple thing to save someone's life like this. Please register to be a marrow donor today.

It's no more work than sucking on a lollipop & even the donation process these days is usually not much worse than blood donation (it just takes longer):

http://marrow.org/Join/Join_Now/Join_Now.aspx

This is ESPECIALLY powerful if you're non-white or mixed race, because -- you probably remember this from when Amit's story started -- the chances of finding a match for an ill non-white or mixed race person is about 1 in TWENTY THOUSAND.

That means that many of these sick people could be saved -- the tech is there, the science is there, but the donors simply aren't. This is hideous, but something we can absolutely fix.

The number of people who registered for Amit will almost surely save many other lives.

So please, please register: http://marrow.org/Join/Join_Now/Join_Now.aspx

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