Phone Call Brings Word of ‘Miracle’ for Leukemia Patient Awaiting Transplant

Just as Mikhail Shirman, pale from exhaustion and the effects of leukemia, was opening a news conference in a Manhattan synagogue Friday, the telephone rang.

It was the message the Israeli biochemist desperately wanted to hear. Soviet authorities had decided to give his brother-in-law in Moscow a visa, clearing the way for his sister Inessa Fleurov--the only person who might be able to save his life--to travel to Israel and donate her bone marrow for a transplant.

“It’s a miracle,” said Shirman, 30. “But I’ll believe it when I see them.”

There was pandemonium and disbelief in the small chapel of the Lincoln Square Synagogue on Manhattan’s West Side where Shirman had intended to explain his plight. A yarmulke covered his head, bald from chemotherapy.

Shirman, who had traveled to the superpower summit in Iceland last weekend to press for the emigration of his sister and brother-in-law, called his wife in Israel.

“According to the words of my wife, who spoke to my sister, they received a postcard to come to the emigration office,” Shirman said.

With reporters clustered around the telephone in the rabbi’s study, Shirman then called his uncle in Moscow. The good news was indeed good news.

“They are permitted to emigrate to Israel,” he said joyfully. “It depends on how quickly they will be able to get the documents.”

Officials of U.S. Jewish organizations who have been helping Shirman said speed is essential because his condition is deteriorating rapidly. Dr. Kenneth Prager, a physician on the staff of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center here, who has been treating Shirman, said that his chances of survival decrease each day the bone marrow transplant is delayed.

“A lot of paper work has to be done (in the Soviet Union),” said Glenn Richter, national coordinator of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. “An effort will be made diplomatically to cut through the red tape.”

‘Need a Second Miracle’

“Although we have had a miracle, now we need a second miracle for his sister to get out and for the transplant to be successful,” added Lynn Singer, executive director of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry.

Prager had asked Dr. Robert Kenneth Gale, the Los Angeles bone marrow specialist who helped treat radiation victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to press Shirman’s case with Soviet authorities. Soviet officials, however, rebuffed Gale’s request.

Prager also approached his congressman, Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The physician also contacted Armand Hammer, chairman of the Occidental Petroleum Corp., about Shirman on at least two occasions.

Thursday night, when Hammer returned from the Soviet Union with Soviet dissident David Goldfarb and Goldfarb’s wife, Cecilia, Prager examined Goldfarb on board the industrialist’s plane after it touched down at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. The physician then approached Hammer again to ask for help in Shirman’s cause.

Hammer said Friday that he had brought the Fleurov case to the attention of Soviet officials when he first heard from Prager.