Every year, nearly two-thirds of the approximately 200,000 patients in need of a bone marrow transplant will not find a marrow donor that matches within their families.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you're black and have leukemia, the chances of finding a donor are drastically reduced. I added my name to the register, and lo and behold, six months later, I was asked to donate. I had a week of 'conditioning' where I had to take these pills and injections to create new stem cells in my body.
Kidney donors don't have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys from living donors tend to last many years longer than kidneys from deceased donors.
I've already had two stem cell transplants. Very rarely does somebody have a third, so I have to maintain my strength so I can go through this.
Back in 2005, the Anthony Nolan Trust could have asked me just to speak out about the lack of ethnic minority donors on the bone marrow register, but that would have meant nothing if I wasn't prepared to join up myself.
In fact, many nations currently refuse to support embryonic stem cell research of any kind.
When you're doing kidney transplants, you have to find out who can exchange kidneys with whom, doing blood tests to make sure it's true. You can't just work on the preliminary data. Then you have to organize the logistics.
We don't have enough solid organs for transplantation; not enough kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs. When you get a liver and you have three people who need it, who should get it? We tried to come up with an ethically defensible answer. Because we have to choose.
Despite the best of efforts, many foster children are neither reunited with their families, nor adopted.
I am a great believer in found families and I'm not a great believer in blood.
More than 100 people are involved in a transplant operation... and we can't waste time and resources if there is a chance the caretakers aren't up for an awesome responsibility.