THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 4, 1997 TAG: 9701040006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 44 lines
Every day, 2,000 people search the national bone-marrow registry, including 24 people in Hampton Roads. Their lives depend on finding someone whose bone marrow matches theirs. Thirty to 40 people die waiting every day.
The likelihood that one person's bone marrow matches another person's is one in a million. Those are awful odds, but the outlook brightens as more and more people across the nation have their DNA tested and the results posted on the national registry.
From 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. this Sunday, you can have your blood DNA tested to see if your bone marrow matches that of someone in desperate need. The place is Renaissance Pediatric Practice, Suite 100 A, 4012 Raintree Rd., near Chesapeake Square Mall. Donors should be 18 to 60 years old and in good health.
Sacrifice is involved. For minorities, where the need is most desperate, the test is free. For others, however, the fee Sunday is $19. Normally the cost is $45.
Although no marrow is withdrawn for the test, if your DNA matched that of a person in need, you would be asked to donate marrow. Should you agree, you would undergo outpatientsurgery later. Doctors would push a needle into your hip bone to extract enough of the tissue to save a life. For a couple of days afterward, staff writer Debra Gordon reported, you would be sore, as though you'd fallen off a horse.
In making sacrifices, it helps to picture the face of someone in need. Five-month-old Hannah Gosey's face was on the front page of Thursday's Pilot. She is the daughter of Kim and David Gosey of Portsmouth. Today she's normal. But because of a rare genetic defect, she will be severely retarded, blind and probably deaf by the time she's old enough for elementary school. She will die very young.
Unless she gets a bone-marrow transplant.
Odds are your DNA won't match Hannah's. Odds are your DNA won't match anyone's. But it might.
Imagine how thrilled you would be if you saved the life of someone like Hannah.
But first your blood must be tested.