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I'm going to hang this off of your post because it's near the top of the thread:
 
  It's fast, easy and FREE to register as a marrow donor. They ask for an optional $100 donation to cover the cost of the test, but it's not required. The registry test involves swabbing the inside of your mouth, at home. It takes about 40 seconds (4 swabs @ 10 seconds each). It's completely painless and there are no needles or doctors involved.
 
  Join the Marrow Registry - http://marrow.org/Join/Join_the_Registry.aspx

Obviously, registering to become a donor is an important and serious decision to make, but they're short on donors of people not of white/European descent. There's a high likelihood chance you'll never be asked to donate, but there's a 1 in 300,000 chance that you could save a life.

I'm going to hang this off of your post because it's near the top of the thread:
 
  It's fast, easy and FREE to register as a marrow donor. They ask for an optional $100 donation to cover the cost of the test, but it's not required. The registry test involves swabbing the inside of your mouth, at home. It takes about 40 seconds (4 swabs @ 10 seconds each). It's completely painless and there are no needles or doctors involved.
 
  Join the Marrow Registry - http://marrow.org/Join/Join_the_Registry.aspx

Obviously, registering to become a donor is an important and serious decision to make, but they're short on donors of people not of white/European descent. There's a high likelihood chance you'll never be asked to donate, but there's a 1 in 300,000 chance that you could save a life.

Depends on how risky you consider anesthesia. That's about the riskiest aspect of donating marrow, followed closely by the risk of local infection.... As for the process, they basically stick a needle into your pelvic bone and draw out some marrow.

http://www.marrow.org/DONOR/When_You_re_Asked_to_Donate_fo/Donation_FAQs/index.html#process

The Marrow was donated by a 10/10 marker match anonymously. It was gathered from the donor through PBSC Donation
PBSC donation uses a process similar to when you donate Plasma. The actual transplant was much different than what I expected. They took the Marrow and it was put into her intraveniously while she was asleep. It looked similar to a blood transfusion, except the bone marrow looked chunky. Was very strange. Not as strange though as the platelet transfusions she needed while the bone marrow was grafting. The bag of blood platelets were yellow. Looked pretty nasty.

I'm pretty sure you were joking, but I do recommend you get on the National Marrow Registry at http://www.marrow.org./ They take a swab of your cheek and put your DNA profile into a registry that is checked for matches when someone needs a transplant. If you are a match you get a call.

I haven't done it myself (yet), but I remember a Penn Jilette radio show where he emphasized that this is not true. Did a little digging myself and found this:

MYTH: The bone marrow donation procedure is painful.

FACT: General or regional anesthesia is always used for this procedure. Donors feel no needle injections and no pain during marrow donation.

On the other hand, some google results show that there may be some pain after the procedure.

In any case, it's a good thing and everybody should do it.

However, finding a match is notoriously difficult. It's nowhere remotely as simple as finding a blood donor.

Many times, a donor can be found within the recipient's immediate family. However, when this is not possible, the odds of finding a match quickly diminish (particularly for minorities). A minority donor without a match in his/her immediate family has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of finding a match.

I might as well take this opportunity to plug the National Marrow Registry, which you should totally join as a service to humanity.

Goodbye sweet karma, but here goes.

Bullshit. If organ donation is mandatory then all I have to do is find somebody that is a good match for me and kill him. If I'm at the top of the list I win and so do several others. Even if I go to jail for a while, at least I'll be alive. So help me, if that world comes about I hope you and the people who promote it are the first ones against the wall.

Its all well and good to hold your own opinions but have a fucking heart. Having a loved one die is #3 on the list of most stressful things in this life. Do you know what #1 is? Having to choosing to remove a loved one from life support, specifically when its not clear cut. And a significant portion of the population feel that way about organ donation. You win the most callous jackass of the month prize. (BTW - having a spouse commit suicide is #2. These ranks are from a peer reviewed medical ethics journal circa 1992. Sorry, I don't recall the exact reference.)

There are some people who feel that the body is perfectly equivalent to the person who just resided in it. For them stealing the person's organs is like stealing their soul. Would you like me to steal your mom's soul? How about just a piece? If you really are just a materialist then how about 1 cubic inch of her still living brain, your choice which cubic inch. (sorry to be so graphic but the point must be made)

Truly, organ donation is a miracle of modern science and the population needs to be educated about it, but it must always be a choice. The Red Cross really messed up for this guy, he should not have been pressured and badgered, and he certainly should not have to defend his choice to people like you. In an ideal world the choice of what to do with your remaining highly organized hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen after the ineffable sweet glory of consciousness has faded should be up to you. But in a world where death does not ordain to notify us in advance that is not always possible. Forcing a loved one who is in the most acute stages of grief to voluntarily commit an act of unspeakable instinctual horror isn't kind or fair, but it is often a necessary thing and so should be undertaken with exquisite care and sensitivity.

Refusing organ donation is distinctly not tantamout to murder. If it is for you then I hope to whatever you believe in that you donate blood every 6 weeks or platelets every 2 weeks, sperm/ova at every chance you get and are registered at the National Marrow Donor Program http://www.marrow.org/ at the very least. After all its just spare biological material you're not going to use, right?

Now's as good as a time as ever to register as a marrow donor, and very likely save a life in the process.

After being presented with this opportunity, I was unable to formulate any argument in my mind not to do this. Marrow donations require a very specific genetic match, and chances are that if someone requires a marrow donation, their life depends on it.

Seriously folks, if you're eligible to do so, please register to be a marrow donor, and donate blood as often as you can. What goes around comes around.

Sorry, but the disavowal of differences between races is running up against more and more scientific evidence to the contrary. Human racial groupings may not be as discrete as species, but they have medical relevance.

The reality of race
http://mednews.stanford.edu/releases/2005/january/ racial-data.htm
http://www.policyreview.org/DEC01/satel.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0002A35 3-C027-1E1C-8B3B809EC588EEDF

Medical significance of race
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/080501/m et_6870358.html
http://www.marrow.org/NMDP/black_african_american_ patients.html
http://p221.ezboard.com/fbalkanhistoryfrm17.showMe ssage?topicID=2.topic

t's flame bait because you don't know if it's more or less promising research.

I'm sorry I didn't post the multitudes of papers available on the subject. I figured anyone who can get on the internet and view slashdot was fully capable of using Google to do a little research to backup my claim.

So if thousands of well-educated people in their field say this shows promise and someone outside their field says no it's pointless then either they're clueless or they're trying to start a flame war.

Oh, so I must be the only one who came up with adult stem cells as an alternative? There are thousands of scientists who believe adult stem cells are the better alternative. While embryonic stem cell research makes a Slashdot headline for actually doing something, adult stem cell research has had MANY results already.

http://www.marrow.org/MEDICAL/diseases_treatable_b y_stem_cell_transplants.html
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=860
http://www.lifeissues.org/cloningstemcell/adultste msuccess.htm
http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=19641
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/facts/prentice.htm
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2918stem_cel ls.html
etc.

So, with incredible results already being done, why focus on the back-burner? It's like continuing to research the vacuum tube when we've got transistors.

For years now, bone marrow has been used to help cure people with various forms of cancer. With the prospect of this new insulin producing cell transplant, could something on the order of the NMPD (National Marrow Donor Program) be on the horizon (the NMDP matches unrelated donors with patients based on genetic markers - there is little need for antirejection drugs when matches are good).

Any thoughts?

When my daughter was born, we donated her umbilical cord for research just like this. It was a huge hassle. Maybe break-throughs like this will help to make the process simpler so more people can participate. You can read more about it here.

It should be standard practice to store them now from newborns for when stem cell technology matures in the future.

In most major metropolitan areas you can donate cord blood at no cost. As long as you're donating it, that is. If you want to store it for future usage by your child alone then be prepared to pay a good bit of money -- the one price I've seen is $39/mo. When you donate it the universities and research centers will happily pay the fees on your behalf, since they can then use the resulting stem cells for research and what not.

Read more about cord blood donation here (nice FAQ). It's important to note that a barrier to adoption is the cost of the equipment itself.

a US company held a patent on the harvesting(?) of cord blood stem cells, and demanded a license fee which is hampering the introduction of this

A quick Google search appears to show that PharmaStem Theraputics, Inc. holds a patent on this in the US. It was, however, overturned in Europe. If you want more details, feel free to google.

I can see why this work has been done, but there are a number of ways to generate this material that isn't morally suspect

I think the issue is that not all stem cells are created equal. IIRC, the stem cells found in cord blood have already specialized to a certain degree and cannot be used as truely universal cells. Those taken from embryos at an early stage of development, however, can.

Gotta say, this has me all squeemish. I've been pro-choice for a long time now, but my wife is due today (the kiddo, however, seems to have other plans... sigh), and we had a miscarraige before this pregnancy. I can't imagine doing anything like this (the harvesting; we're planning to donate cord blood AFAIK) at the moment.

Other sources for stem cells include fat rolls, and as somebody else mentioned, umbilical cords.

It's not every day that you have a genuine chance to save the life of another human being. By having a vial of your blood tested and placed into a database used by the National Marrow Donor Program, you could potentially become an anonymous bone marrow donor for another person who would otherwise die of leukemia or other blood disorders.

The testing procedure only takes a few minutes and is a simple blood test. The NMDP keeps the data until you reach age 60 (or until you ask them to remove your name from their database). There's no obligation after taking the test, and if you ever match a patient, the NMDP makes every effort to ensure that you have given your informed consent before proceeding.

I can say from personal experience that these guys are true professionals and that privacy for all parties involved was taken very seriously. (This is Slashdot; somebody is sure to bring up the they've-got-information-on-you angle.)

You don't get many real chances to save a life, and this one isn't that hard to fulfill.

/EJS

That's if you can actually find an unrelated donor.

• Approximately 80 percent of all patients identify at least one potential match on their preliminary search. Remember, however, that not all of the 80 percent of patients who identify an identical donor at the preliminary search will necessarily go on to the transplant stage. (
• National Marrow Donor Program)

And the success rate of 85% with allogenic (unrelated) donors is probably that high because the recipients are given higher doses of immune-suppression drugs, which can have nasty side effects, even while they prevent rejection.