h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Whom do you contact to register your willingness to be a donor?

If you contact the Anthony Nolan Trust (http://www.anthonynolan.com/) you should be able to find out about registoring.

I have donated bone marrow to my sister about 5 years ago and as long as you are in good health the experiance is relativley painless and the recovry period was pretty short. ( I was at the Reading rock festival 5-6 days after my operation slumming it in a muddy field.

I am thinking of registring with the trust myself once I have confirmed that i am eligible again. I seem to remeber the doctors saying i couldn't donate again for a certain period of time.

I hope you can find time to help someone.

That made intresting reading....Thanks

We are going to put a link in the article, along with the contact address.

If you happen to be in the United States, you can get information via http://www.marrow.org . Also, if you're in the habit of donating blood, your local Red Cross center should be able to help you get into the bone marrow registry as well.

Nice article. Some time I shall have to write one up on my experiences with plasma pheresis. I've already talked about regular blood donation in the US in http://www.h2g2.com/A199848 -- much less strenuous than what you did, but an easier way for people to begin getting involved.

Well done and thank you for a really interesting article. I came close to donating but was pregnant when contacted and subsequently have developed an auto-immune thyroid deficiency and now am unable to even donate blood. (I feel quite deprived at not having the opportunity to help people!) I can vividly remember little Anthony Nolan on television and all the trials he went through which is why I "signed up" as soon as the trust was started. Anyone who reads this article should, if possible sign up to be a bone marrow donor.

As the Anthony Nolan Trust's PR Manager I'd like to thank everyone who has shown an interest in this great article. But Gwennie's point about being pregnant and not being able to donate raised an important point, and one which is a problem for us. Women cannot donate marrow while they are pregnant or while their child is under a year old. As 70% of the 300,000 UK adults on the Anthony Nolan register are young females you can see that this does cause a problem.

We desperately need more males to join if we are to offer the best chance of life to all of those who turn to us for help every year - and that's around 4,000 new cases

Sorry - I cut myself off mid-stream!

As I was saying we are asked to search for 4,000 new cases every year - and when you think that a person who has been told they will need a bone marow transplant has been told this is the last chance of long-term survival, that's a huge responsibility on all of us.

Please visit the web site and do what you can to help. You have to be between 18 and 40, over 8st and in good health to join the register. But even if you can't join there are other things you can do to help - so please pay us a visit.

Remember, we desperately need men and people from all ethnic minority groups. (Did you know that you will only find a matching donor from a similar ethnic background?)

Together we can beat leukaemia and give others what we all take for granted - LIFE.

Al Bundys master is going to check this out. It sounds a very very worth while cause. He is young, fit and male, so he has no excuses!!.

Hm, a question: is there any international co-operation in this area? Can bone marrow be reasonably shipped across the Atlantic, or is that cost-ineffective? Should a US inhabitant think about getting cross-registered in the UK registry? I sort of doubt it, but it seems worth asking.

Thank you for coming here and commenting AP.

Expert input is always welcome.

- Peta

Wow! That's an incredible description! My fiance has signed up to be a donor, but has had no matches yet. I still haven't gotten the courage up yet, but do give blood on a regualr basis. (I'm O- and CRV-, which means my blood can be used for premature babies, HIV patients and other folks with low immune systems.) Do you have any words of advice for just getting through the initial drawing of the sample? Needles don't normally bother me, but that's a *big* one! Thanks for any help and advice you can give. And thanks, most of all, for helping folks out that way!

At least in the States, the initial needle is just the regular old blood donation one...to get into the registry, they just need to do a tissue-typing, which happens from whole blood. They don't use the big needle to actually draw marrow until and unless you're matched to someone and agree to go ahead with the procedure.

Oh, good! When Erik joined 5 years ago, they stuck him with the big one to get a sample of marrow from his hip bone. He limped for two days afterwards. I'm allergic to pain, so that made me a bit worried. If its just a regular needle, though, I'm set!

Hm, well, I signed up in the States more like 8 years ago. On the other hand, I was already being typed for platelet pheresis donations -- so perhaps that got me out of the big stick. But the US web site just says "a small blood sample" is required.

In that case, I'll talk to them about it on Saturday! Thanks, ffmike!