Leukaemia, bone marrow donors and the gift of life

The Australian Jewish News, Friday March 11, 2005

UNTIL he was dying, US-based Jay Feinberg hardly knew he had family in Australia.

But last week, the former leukaemia patient was in Melbourne to meet the family he never knew he had and to help promote Gift of Life, the bone marrow donors' registry he and his family founded in 1991 to help find a match - and save his life.

Feinberg's Australian relatives, the Grosmans, heard about Gift of Life when Feinberg was on his death bed and put their names down as potential donors. Although they weren't a match, Feinberg, who gave up a career in law to run Gift of Life full time, pledged to visit Australia and thank them for their act of kindness.

"We are here now, [because of my illness] able to meet family we have never met before," Feinberg told the AJN. "The Jewish community comes out in force to do this ... the whole concept of saving a life - pikuach nefesh - is tremendous."

Now 36, Feinberg is a few months shy of the 10th anniversary of his transplant. He travelled to Sydney this week to meet with Shula Endrey-Walder, the Jewish community co-ordinator for the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry (ABMDR). Together, they were scheduled to tour the NSW bone marrow recruiting office at the Australian Red Cross* Sydney headquarters.

In Melbourne, Feinberg also met with SBS Radio broadcaster Yehuda Kaplan, himself a former lympho-blastic leukaemia patient.
Kaplan, who was diagnosed around the same time as Feinberg, beat the disease without a transplant, but a successful match could have saved him from months of cancer treatment. He said in light of the growing Israeli population in Australia, people of Sephardi origin are especially encouraged to register.

"Because of the widespread Jewish community [in Melbourne], the genetic make-up has changed," he said "Too many people have died quietly."

In its first four years, Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation recruited nearly 60,000 Jewish potential donors of eastern European descent worldwide. In 1995, the very last donor tested positive as a match for Feinberg, who was rushed to Seattle for life-saving surgery.

Gift of Life is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association. In Australia, the ABMDR has around 3000 Jewish donors. The ABMDR has reported that finding a bone marrow match in the same ethnic group is around 1:50,000, whereas in the general community, the odds are 1:100,000.

Since 1994, there have been seven matches from Jewish registrants in Sydney. In Melbourne, a donor drive held in the past two years has yielded more than 600 potential donors, with a few matches.

By Melissa Singer