I have discovered my new Cause of the Week!
For completely selfish and self-preserving purposes, I would like to take this moment to encourage all of my multi-ethnic brethren to register as bone marrow donors. And especially for my own self-serving purposes, I would like to encourage Japanese-Swedish mixed Asians to donate (jk).
The fact of the matter of the matter is that while there is only an incredibly small number of minorities registered to donate bone marrow, there is an even smaller number of multiethnic individuals registered. And as much as modern PC thought tries to tell us there is nothing to this whole "race" thing, the cold hard reality is that when a child is born to two ethnically different parents, and it turns out that that child needs a bone marrow transplant, the chances of them getting a match with other family members is almost nil, and with there being so few ethnically mixed registered donors, the chances of them finding a match and having their lives saved is almost non-existant. And being an American of mixed descent, I find it a little scary that if I am ever in need of tissue or bone marrow, the current system almost needs an act of god for me to be able to find a match.
The registration and typing itself only requires one vial of blood. On the grand scheme of things, that's less than the doctor takes if you have to go to the hospital (trust me, I know. I had the flu a few weeks ago and the lab managed to take four vials of blood over the course of three hours). And while the procedure to actually remove the bone marrow is incredibly painful (you have to get the epidural and all), there are a couple things to think about. First of all, even though being registered and having someone find a match puts you in this moral bind between your own desire to avoid pain yet to also be able to help another person live, there's the fact that even if you were not registered, it wouldn't prevent that other individual from getting sick.
Yet if for some reason you are opposed to this registration or procedure, I am not going to sit here trying to preach you into adhering to my own personal beliefs, just as I would hope that even if you were to disagree with me, you'd still be able to see my point of view.
It is just my hope that if you've never given thought to registering as a bone marrow donor, this little post might make you think about the great benefit you could give to another human being. Though it's wonderful to dream of someday creating a new medicine, or performing a heroric dread to save millions, it's another thing within the grasp of all to take an afternoon (only an hour or so, even counting transit time), to register as a bone marrow donor.
Who knows, if you're mixed, and you encourage a few mixed people around you to register with you, and they the encourage a few, you might not only be setting yourself up to be able to more easily receive a donation if you ever need it, but you might be able to save lives by increasing the donation pool.
Either way, with all that corny sentiment, please take the time to look into registering.
http://www.psbc.org/community/programs/default.htm
^^^^check it out!!! \(^-^)/ | 
