On the evening of May 6, 2010, in the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt New York, something extraordinary was happening. The Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation Partners for Life Gala was in full regalia. The annual donor and recipient group photo was about to be taken. Extraordinary not only because that it included over one hundred bone marrow donors and transplant recipients. It was even more special because the organization’s Founder and Executive Director, Jay Feinberg, is alive to take part in the event and see this photo opportunity in particular, unfold. No-one is more amazed than he to see the growth and successes of the organization, built out of his own experience, in every smiling face before him.
What started as a grassroots bone marrow recruitment effort to save the life of one man has since grown into a life-long mission for Jay. At the age of twenty-two, Jay was just starting out on the path of his adult life, when he was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia, known in short as CML, an aggressive form of the disease. At the time of his diagnosis in 1991, his doctors advised that his best chance for survival was a transplant from a donor within the same ethnic group. Both of his brothers were tested, but neither was found to be a match. However, still not prepared to give up hope, his family and friends launched an extensive campaign known as Friends of Jay. Starting from within their own community in West Orange, New Jersey, and sending a team as far as Belarus, Russia, in search of someone to match Jay, they continued their exhaustive search over the next four years and tested close to 60,000 people. Finally, as time grew short and Jay became weaker by the day, it was time to consider a partial match for transplant. One last recruitment drive was scheduled to take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and it was in Milwaukee that Jay’s miracle – a perfect match, was found in a young woman who wasn’t even supposed to be at the drive. She was the sixty-thousandth person tested; the last name on the roster. Fate had definitely stepped in, and fifteen years later, Jay has turned the quest of finding matches for others into his life’s work. The Friends of Jay became Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, and gave Jay a whole new lease on life.
Today, Gift of Life maintains a bone marrow registry of over 154,000 potential volunteer bone marrow donors, and has facilitated over 2,100 transplants to patients suffering from a host of genetic diseases, from leukemia to lymphoma; people who are in desperate need of life-saving transplants. This is done through recruitment drives aimed at increasing the number of available donors in the registry. And to this end, Gift of Life has created partnerships with other national and international organizations, like Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life and fraternal organizations like AEPi on college campuses across the United States, as well as Taglit Birthright Israel Kedma and Oranim, groups that organize large trips to Israel for thousands of young people every year. College-age students, in particular, are a vital part of the Gift of Life registry, as a donor may remain active, with relative good health, from the age of eighteen through the age of sixty. So someone in his/her early twenties has a long time to remain active in the registry.
Staying on the cutting edge of new technology in transplantation, Gift of Life also sustains a cord blood bank of over 1,000 cord blood units. Recruitment efforts for the Cord Blood Program are currently limited to mothers who use certain obstetrician practices affiliated with Maimonides Hospital, and currently participate as cord blood collectors in the Boro Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Once collected, the cord blood units are stored at UMASS in Worcester, Massachusetts.
In addition to facilitating transplants, Gift of Life also provides advocacy services to patients and their families who are in desperate need of resources and immediate information. The Ambassador Program, which is comprised of donors, recipients, volunteers and supporters alike, functions to build awareness of the organization’s mission through participation in local community events such as speaking engagements, donor recruitment drives and health fairs. They act as mentors for potential donors who are unsure if they should join the registry and provide education about the process based on their own personal and inspirational experiences.
Gift of Life is North America’s only registry with a mission to recruit donors from within the Jewish community and to facilitate transplants worldwide. Since tissue-type is inherited, a patient’s best chance of finding a genetic match lies with donors of similar ethnicity. Gift of Life strives to increase the representation of Jewish donors in the world-wide registry in order to overcome the devastating effects of the Holocaust, which severed family bloodlines, leaving many people today no other recourse than to search the unrelated donor pool for a match. The vision of the organization is simple: a match anytime, anywhere, for anyone in need.
For further information about Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation or to make a tax-deductible contribution, please visit the web site at www.giftoflife.org or call 1-800-9MARROW.