Tank
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- Apr 2, 2009
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If Nick Glasgow were white, he would have a nearly 90 percent chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor who could cure his leukemia.
But because the 28-year-old bodybuilder is one-quarter Japanese, his doctor warned him the outlook was grim. Glasgow's background would make it almost impossible to find a match, which usually comes from a patient's own ethnic group.
The doctor "didn't say it was slim-to-none. He didn't say it would be hard. He said 'zero chance,'" Glasgow's mother, Carole Wiegand, recalled with tears in her eyes. "When Nick heard that, it sent him plummeting."
"The truth is, when people of different backgrounds marry and produce offspring, it creates more types that are harder to match," said Michelle Setterholm, the program's director of scientific services. "The probability just gets lower when you have people of mixed ancestral DNA."
The Associated Press: Mixed-race patients struggle to find marrow donors
But because the 28-year-old bodybuilder is one-quarter Japanese, his doctor warned him the outlook was grim. Glasgow's background would make it almost impossible to find a match, which usually comes from a patient's own ethnic group.
The doctor "didn't say it was slim-to-none. He didn't say it would be hard. He said 'zero chance,'" Glasgow's mother, Carole Wiegand, recalled with tears in her eyes. "When Nick heard that, it sent him plummeting."
"The truth is, when people of different backgrounds marry and produce offspring, it creates more types that are harder to match," said Michelle Setterholm, the program's director of scientific services. "The probability just gets lower when you have people of mixed ancestral DNA."
The Associated Press: Mixed-race patients struggle to find marrow donors