Yul Kwon turned 32 on Valentine’s Day and apparently donated “$50,000 of his cash from winning “Survivor: The Cook Islands” to the Asian American Donor Program, in the hopes the money will help educate Asian-Americans about the importance of bone marrow donation.” according to this San Francisco Examiner article.
As you have probably already read, Yul’s high school friend and Stanford college roommate died of leukemia because he didn’t get a bone marrow donation in time. I donated blood to the Asian American Donor Program many, many years ago because a college friend of mine’s cousin was in dire need of a bone marrow donation. Fortunately, he did get a bone marrow transplant and survived.
However, I know that a work colleague of mines son died of leukemia because his son wasn’t able to get one. A bone marrow match is especially difficult if you are bi-racial apparently (his son was half-Asian, half-Caucasian).
So get yourself into the registry - you could literally save a life!
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HC-G wrote:
On a related note, this is also why we arranged for the preservation of our infant’s cord blood — his ethnic combination is truly multiracial Asian (I’m Korean and my husband is 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 Anglo-Indian).
Cord blood also saves lives — preserve your newborn’s cord blood.
Posted on 20-Feb-07 at 9:31 am | Permalink
Efren wrote:
Unfortunately, many in the API community are completely unaware of the ban on donating any kind of blood products by anyone who’s had sex with a man who’s had sex with men, even if they’re HIV negative.
I’ve been asked many times to help out with API bone marrow drives and whatnot, and there’s usually shock on the faces of those volunteers who realize that gay/bi/queer API men can’t donate blood or blood products. Unless of course, they lie, which a lot of us have to do in order to participate.
I’ve told those bone marrow drives and other ethnically oriented drives that if they’re willing to fight to get rid of this outdated and homophobic policy, I’ll be more than happy to participate in these drives. But until then, I’m going to raise awareness about this and tell them to help get rid of this policy.
Posted on 20-Feb-07 at 11:59 pm | Permalink