View Single Post
  #2  
Old Mon Jun 14, 2010, 01:09 PM
Neil Cuadra Neil Cuadra is offline
Owner
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Los Angeles, California
Posts: 2,553
I asked somebody from the National Marrow Donor ("Be The Match") Program about their rather strict requirements, but not specifically about fibromyalgia. They told me that "doing no harm" is a top priority so they don't want to take any chances with donor health. I don't know why you got inconsistent answers. I wonder if they have specific written guidelines about fibromyalgia that they could show you.

If you want to pursue it, I suggest that you ask your own doctor if donating would harm you. If not, get a letter from him or her and send it to the NMDP as an "appeal," to see what they say. Were they talking about a bone marrow donation? If so, ask your doctor if a stem cell donation would be safer.

Personally, I think they go a little overboard in the safety-of-the-donor direction without considering the small risk on the donor side against what might possibly be the last chance for the recipient. If the recipient has other options, it probably wouldn't be worth risks to the donor, but how many Mexican, Indian, German, Irish, French, Jewish, matching donors could they have?

A NMDP representative told me that they won't accept a person in fantastic health who happens to be over their donor age limit, even when he or she is the only match for someone. I wish they were more flexible about it.

I suppose that an unfortunate outcome for a donor would produce bad publicity that could scare off other donors, but I also think that some of their rules are out of date.


By the way, you used the Marrowforums forum system properly. "Submit New Thread" means "start a discussion", which is what you did.
Reply With Quote