Bone Marrow is Racist

Jimmy Loon is a marrow expert for One Lambda, the nation’s largest supplier of bone marrow testing kits. He says the goal is to find someone with matching human leukocyte antigens located on chromosome six.

This is called a haplo-type and it’s made up of alleles inherited from each parent.

Of the seven million people in the National Marrow Donor Program only 180,000 have multi-racial backgrounds.

“The larger the donor pool the better chance for finding a match,” said Jimmy Loon.

KABC via AR

Wait, I thought race was a social construct?

Here it's clearly biological.

This article shows us that multi-racial patients need bone marrow from multi-racial donors because different races have different antigens, and when you mix races, you create a unique group of antigens needed. So then you need another member of this new mixed race to donate, and only about a quarter of patients are able to find a match.

Why is it that interpretations of science are clearly divided -- those who are biological determinists tend to be old-school conservative, or realists, while those who are either liberal or Christian fundamentalist demand we deny biology for symbolic convenience?

Race -- a concept used without definition in media, politics and daily conversation -- is misunderstood to be skin color and national identity, not a branching of evolution's process, which is both parallel and linear.

It's as if humanity is running in fear from science.