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To Whom it May Concern:
A friend of my family, Sam Cross, is a Korean
American Harvard student with
leukemia. I was wondering if your organization might be willing to circulate
the letter
below from Sam's father to your organization. Because he is
bi-racial he is having trouble finding a bone marrow match
and the family is
looking for Koren, other Asian or bi-racial donors to help their son. Please
feel free to contact
me with any questions.
Thank you very much,
Rachael Omansky
617 721 8057
Call
for bone marrow donors - an appeal from Fred Cross
I would like to introduce myself. I am a professor
of genetics at the
Rockefeller University, of Caucasian background, married to Elizabeth
Kim,who arrived from Korea
at the age of 12. We have a son, Sam, who
iscurrently a senior at Harvard. Over the winter break he was diagnosed
with
acute myeloid leukemia. He has been undergoing extensive chemotherapy.
It is possible that a final cure for this deadly disease may require a
bone
marrow transplant. Unfortunately, even though there are currently more
than 7 million donors registered internationally,
none are an exact tissue
typing (HLA) match for Sam, since he has a relatively rare Caucasian
haplotype from me and
a more typical Asian one from his mom. Therefore, the
most likely source for a perfect match for Sam are people with both
Caucasian
and Asian ancestry (1/2, 1/4 or 3/4 Asian could all be fine).
I am writing to ask if there members of the HMS community
who might be
interested in registering as bone marrow donors. Registering as a potential
donor is completely painless,
involving filling out a form and taking acheek
swab. Most potential donors are never asked to donate, but the donation
process
itself involves only some moderate inconvenience and possible
discomfort, and of course has the potential to save a life.
The removed stem
cells are rapidly regenerated by the donor's body so there are no medical consequences at all for the
donor.
Kits for registering as a potential donor are available from DKMS
Americas(http://www.dkmsamericas.org/donors/become.html) including a
pre-paid FedEx package for returning the material. DKMS Americas
will
provide HLA testing and entry into the registry for absolutely anybody
independent of racial or ethnic background,
for no fee.
DKMS Americas will also help you organize a local drive if you are at all
interested in doing this.
Mostly they need a local contact person.
Another organization that will provide kits through the mail, and that also
helps
organize drives, is AADP: http://www.aadp.org/become_a_donor.html.AADP specializes in people of Asian or part-Asian extraction.
Sam is registered
on Facebook, and you can also get some information about
him on a website generated by his uncle: http://www.helpsamiam.com.I would like to emphasize that our interest here extends way beyond just
finding
a donor for our son. In the U.S., only about a fifth of patients
needing bone marrow transplants can find donors, and this
problem is
particularly acute for those of mixed racial backgrounds, due to differing
distributions of HLA types among
human sub-populations. We encourage people of all ethnic backgrounds to register.
Sincerely,
Fred Cross and
Elizabeth Kim
_________________________________________________________________________
Saturday, June 4, 2005
Although the United States leads the fight in stamping out human trafficking,
fourteen nations were said of not doing enough to stop this illegal trade in their countries. Three (3) of those nations
are Allies of the United States in the fight against terrorism. Employers of these low wage laborers usually physically
and sexually abuse those they "hire" and the children of these laborers are sometimes forced to be beggars; these same
employers also withhold pay and other documents such as passports to prevent the migrant workers from leaving. For more information
click on the link below.
Courtesy: Yahoo news; Anne Gearan, AP Diplomatic Writer; and
AP
Human Trafficking
For more detailed information: Click on the link below from the United
States Department of State.
DOS Human Trafficking Report. (pdf file)
View Philippine landslide photos
Remembering Fred Korematsu
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