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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.

#231

Post by jinfiesto »

tibbon wrote: post #218
corin_ wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would do the test on your blood regardless (they do it on all blood). Regarding the 3 months: the UK only just changed it from a lifetime ban for MSM to 12 months - they feel that 12 is safer, many people have argued that this is still over the top. I'm not a doctor, and I'm not well enough informed to tell you who is right on this. Countries that do have a lifetime ban certainly need their policies updated. Reg…

The policy still doesn't add up. They really should just ask anyone if they've had unsafe sex outside of a monogamous and std tested relationship in 3/12 months. I could very well have had sex with 100 women in the past 3 months (as a man) and been unsafe with all of them. Yet, they don't seem to be the least bit worried about that scenario.

While I support allowing homosexuals to donate, I don't think your comparison is fair.

Having 100 random sexual encounters with randomly sampled women leaves you approximately a 50% chance of having unprotected sex with someone who has HIV. Not to mention, HIV may not even be transmitted even if you have an encounter.

On the other hand, after 100 random homosexual MSM encounters, your chances of having had unprotected sex with someone carrying HIV is 99.99997344%.

MSM puts you at a much higher risk for HIV. That's fact.

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

#232

Post by jacoblyles »

kristopolous wrote: post #131
corin_ wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV doesn't show up immediately (possibly other STDs are the same, not sure off the top of my head), if I remember correctly most people will test positive within 3 months of being infected.

Ah very good then. Well since the CDC now says that blacks and women are the most at-risk for HIV, we should probably change the rules with the times then, right? What's that? It now sound horribly offensive, erroneous, and bad policy? Well sorry about that! Gotta be consistent you know.

The prevalence rate for MSM (about 20,000 / 100,000)[1] is much higher than for black women (1,122 per 100,000)[2] or black men (2,388 per 100,000), though you are correct that all three groups have very high concentrations of HIV positive persons.

[1]http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/26/study-20-of-homosexual... [2]http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/factshe...

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

#233

Post by spwmoni »

da_dude4242 wrote: post #110

I'm Russian who probably has some asian DNA(ural region/mongolian?). Can someone explain to me the likelyhood of being a compatible match?

With Amit? Low. But with somebody who needs marrow, high enough that it's worth getting the kit anyway.

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

#234

Post by codeaholic »

danielna wrote: post #177
nostromo wrote: post #78

Since I'm still gay, I'm not allowed to help, no matter how many times you ask. I get why they do this and I shouldn't let it bother me, but emotionally it feels the same as if they just said, "Please become a donor, nohomo." edit: Of course I still wish the very best for Amit.

Hi nostromo, I'm a Level II Volunteer for the National Marrow Donor Program, meaning I've had the training to coordinate and run drives locally. Let me preface my comment by saying I'm in no shape or form someone who is qualified to speak for the organization as a whole, as I've only become a volunteer in the last year. These thoughts are my own. In my limited experience being a part of marrow drives I've come across…

Quick unrelated question: Could any typing done by 23andme.com be used by the marrow registry? I would think itd be awesome if a voluntary, opt-in data sharing agreement was established between the two organizations. When you login after your genotyping is done, one of the options could be "Do you wish to share your typing information to become a marrow donor?"

I don't mean to insinuate that it's a light decision to make (I recently joined the marrow registry, even though I won't be a match to Amit due to my ethnicity), but if the data already exists, why not reduce the friction to being a donor?

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

#236

Post by aptimpropriety »

skrebbel wrote: post #215
nostromo wrote: post #78

Since I'm still gay, I'm not allowed to help, no matter how many times you ask. I get why they do this and I shouldn't let it bother me, but emotionally it feels the same as if they just said, "Please become a donor, nohomo." edit: Of course I still wish the very best for Amit.

I don't understand anything about this. In the US, straight persons can't get AIDS and gay persons can? Or, what's the point? Anyone care to explain? It sounds like nothing but Alan Turing-style discrimination based on fairy tales to me (but I might miss a point. like that research that proved that being gay is genetic and the same gene also causes sloppy bone marrow)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS#Prevention

This is (in part) explained in the box to the right. Then there is also the 'population statistics' differences.

Epidemiology is a strange field. Because of the difficulty of balancing specificity and sensitivity, "99.9% accurate" tests often end up meaning that even if you test positive, you have a small chance of actually being infected.

Statistics are scary, especially to policy makers. If you tell someone "homosexuals have up to a 5000% higher chance of getting AIDS from sex", that can have a pretty big effect on policy.

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

#237

Post by jarek »

jacoblyles wrote: post #181
jarek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

I'm sorry if reality offends anyone's PC sensibilities, but in the US MSM account for 49% of HIV cases[1] despite accounting for a small percentage of the population. MSM are MUCH more likely to get HIV than, say, frat boys who casually hook up with a lot of females. I'm not sure if the ban is completely justified, but there is potential reason behind it. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/fastfacts-msm-fin…

The statistics do not offend my sensibilities. The FUD does.

There is a long way between "up to one in five MSMs are HIV-positive" to dismissing discussion on whether all MSMs should be banned from donations for life with "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.

#238

Post by refurb »

tomjen3 wrote: post #180
nostromo wrote: post #78

Since I'm still gay, I'm not allowed to help, no matter how many times you ask. I get why they do this and I shouldn't let it bother me, but emotionally it feels the same as if they just said, "Please become a donor, nohomo." edit: Of course I still wish the very best for Amit.

Get tested for a match anyway - if you match you can always say you didn't read the papers very carefully and that as gay person you can't donate. Then when he dies we have somebody to point to and say "this person could have been saved, but for your bigotry".

Not really bigotry, it's about risk reduction.

Remember it wasn't that long ago that hundreds (thousands?) of people got AIDS from donated blood and plasma.

It's all a trade off. You trade access to the bone marrow of a certain population for an overall lower risk of disease transmission.

It's no different than the fact that if you've traveled to a malaria zone in the past year that you can't donate blood.

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

#239

Post by CamperBob »

hartror wrote: post #207
haugstrup wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSE/Mad Cow fears. Because of the BSE outbreak in the UK in the 80s (and the various smaller outbreaks later) the US authorities were scared shitless at some point. So if you've lived 5 or more years in Europe you're banned from donating blood forever. Not sure I understand the logic... Quarantine for a set period I can understand, but banning for life makes little sense. After all there are many blood donors in all…

There is actually logic behind this. BSE is caused by misfolded proteins called prions[1] which also causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease[2] (CJD) in humans. One form of CJD is Kuru[3] which inflicts the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea and is likely transmitted through cannibalism interestingly enough. There isn't a great depth of understanding of these diseases yet but in the case of Kuru the asymptomatic period has been…

What's the connection between cannibals in New Guinea and European blood/marrow donors?

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

#240

Post by hartror »

CamperBob wrote: post #239
hartror wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually logic behind this. BSE is caused by misfolded proteins called prions[1] which also causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease[2] (CJD) in humans. One form of CJD is Kuru[3] which inflicts the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea and is likely transmitted through cannibalism interestingly enough. There isn't a great depth of understanding of these diseases yet but in the case of Kuru the asymptomatic period has been…

What's the connection between cannibals in New Guinea and European blood/marrow donors?

Not sure how I can make it clearer but I will try.

Because Europeans have an increased risk* of having the prion disease BSE they aren't ever allowed to donate. The reasons for this are a similar prion disease in New Guinea has been shown to have a very long asymptomatic period measured in decades. And since there is no screening for prions and no one is sure how long prion diseases remain asymptomatic all Europeans are not allowed to give blood/marrow/organs.

* How much so is of course debatable.

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