Archived Edition: May 04, 2004 | Back to Current	Sep 10, 2010

Bone marrow registry returns to the College
Lindsay Ting - Senior Editor

Members of the College community participated in the third biannual Bone Marrow Registry Drive last Wednesday. Throughout the day, a total of 204 students, faculty and Town residents came to Baxter Lounge to register with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).

The mission of the NMDP is to register as many people as possible in order to increase the odds of finding a match with a patient needing bone marrow. The odds of two unrelated people matching are slim, ranging from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 15,000. For the 70 percent of people who do not find a match among relatives, the NMDP is a last resort.

“It’s a national need that this community [can] help with,” said Adam Grogg ’04, director of the Williams College Bone Marrow Registry. “It’s hard to disregard the power of it.”

The regular procedure for registration costs $78 per person, though the government provides a grant that allows all minorities to register for free; in previous years, the organization needed to conduct substantial fundraising to support the registry drive.

The registry drive “wasn’t a hard sell, but fundraising took a lot of time,” Grogg said.

This year, however, the Alumni Office raised the necessary funds for the drive. “We invited a small number of parents, whom we believed might be interested in the project, to support the drive financially,” said Damon Reed, senior development officer.

Reed estimated that the College raised $8000 this year. Her office will have until June 30 to raise more money if the present funds do not cover the costs for this year’s registry drive. This support from the Alumni Office has allowed organizers of the registry to devote their efforts towards publicizing this year’s drive, Grogg said.

According to Grogg and Reed, this year’s registry drive was a success. Fewer people were registered this year than in past years, but they explained that this is probably because of the small size of the College community – many faculty, staff and students have already registered. Once a person registers, they remain on the list for life.

During the registry drive, Grogg said, some students had to be turned away at the registry’s busiest times. Workers from the Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) Registry in Paramus, N.J. were kept busy throughout the seven-hour process.

Throughout the drive, Grogg said, “there was not a lull…nurses worked straight through without lunch.”

One change in this year’s drive was also noticeable. Participants were only subjected to a thumbprick this year – far less painful than the process in previous years, when two small vials of blood were drawn from the arm.

Though the thumbprick takes a bit longer to collect the necessary sample, Grogg said, “I think we got some people that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten [because of the new procedure].”

The samples will undergo HLA typing that will supply a code for each person’s marrow. Although previously the College has had no way to know if Williams students had successfully matched with someone needing marrow, the HLA Registry will now notify Grogg in such cases.

With no official count of past matches, Grogg only knows of two students who were called for secondary testing. Both students were friends of Grogg’s, and neither ended up donating bone marrow.

Todd Rogers ’01 and Ryu Yokoi ’01 organized the first drive in the spring of 2000. Rogers had spent a lot of time working at a camp for children with leukemia and saw many of them wait for a bone marrow transplant that could save their lives. Unfortunately, Rogers noticed many of the children did not return as the years went on. Soon after, the NMDP was brought to the College.

In the 2000 registry drive, almost 300 people registered. Dana Nelson ’02, Freeden Oeur ’03 and Adam Grogg ’04 organized a second registry drive in 2002.