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Amit Gupta Needs You

Amit Gupta, friend of a friend and the founder of Photo Jojo, was diagnosed with leukemia and needs a bone buy levitra canada marrow transplant. Unfortunately, because South Asians (think India, Afghanistan, East Africa) are under represented in the national bone marrow registry his odds of finding a match are only one in 20,000.

Amit is using the power of his social connections to hold bone marrow donor registrations all over the country, in search of “brown bones,” i.e. minority registrations. People of any ethnicity are of course welcome to register but people of color are most desperately needed.

Unlike some events, which only help the high-profile person lucky enough to have such a network, these bone marrow drives will help anyone who matches with a potential donor. So your registration helps bring up the odds for all people in your ethnic group, not just the ones with a big twitter following. And I think that’s huge.

Registration is free, though if you can afford a $100 donation to cover the cost of processing it’s always appreciated. It takes less than 5 minutes – you swab your cheek and drop the kit in the mail. You can also go to any of the registration drives around the country. Should you match, the donation process is similar to a blood draw – “painless but boring.”

And just in case you needed motivation to register sooner rather than later, Seth Godin is offering a $10,000 bounty on some matching bone marrow.

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