‘The only match of the 20 million on file’ Olympian pleads for bone marrow donors
If you ever fantasized about being someone’s hero, there’s a simple way to save a life — rub a cotton swab on the inside of your cheek, Earl Young told freshmen at Oklahoma Christian University on Wednesday.
Young, who won a gold medal as part of the U.S. men’s 4x400 meter relay team at the 1960 Rome Olympics, visited the university to encourage students to register to donate bone marrow. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2011 and told he had three months to live, unless he had a marrow transplant. He was fortunate enough to have a match: a German woman named Christine Waag who had registered just two weeks earlier.
“Had she not become a donor, I wouldn’t be telling you this, because she was the only match of the 20 million on file,” he said.
Bone marrow contains stem cells, which turn into the red blood cells that carry oxygen, white blood cells that fight infections and platelets that cause blood to clot, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Some people with blood cancers or diseases like sickle cell anemia need a transplant because their marrow can’t produce healthy cells.
Unfortunately, only about 40 percent of people who need a bonemarrow transplant find a match, which makes it vital to expand the number of potential donors, Young said.
“I’m not asking you to jump into a foxhole. I’m not asking you to run into a burning building,” he said. “I’m asking you to swab” your cheek.
The student group Eagles Health Initiative invited Young to speak to the incoming freshmen class during orientation week, club president Whitney Hall said. She said she hopes about half the 550 freshmen would agree to participate.
“We wanted them to be part of something,” she said.
Olivia Haddox, a donor recruitment coordinator at DKMS, which runs a donor registry, said colleges are particularly good places to recruit because most students haven’t developed chronic conditions that could disqualify them from donating.
After answering questions to determine if they are eligible, donors swab their cheeks to collect cells, Haddox said. A lab then tests the DNA for the human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) on the cells, she said.
HLAs are proteins on the surface of cells that the body uses to determine if a cell is part of itself, or an invader that should be destroyed, according to Be the Match, another donor-recruiting organization. The closer the donor and recipient’s HLA profiles are, the more likely the transplant will be a success.
People who share a common ancestry are more likely to have matching HLA profiles, Haddox said, which makes it important to register people from a variety of backgrounds.
“The goal here is to really diversify it as much as possible,” she said.
Freshman Megan Arispe, who signed up during the drive, said her family had a scare a few years ago when they thought her sister
would need a transplant. Fortunately, her condition turned out not to be leukemia, but the experience impressed on them how important marrow donors were, she said.
Asia Sanders, also a freshman, said she didn’t have a personal connection to blood diseases, but wanted to volunteer if someone needed her bone marrow.
“If I can help, why not help?” she said.