American Doctor Asks Vietnam Aid for Leukemia Victim

An American doctor has asked the Vietnamese government and a U.S. official who arrived in Hanoi on Saturday to work together to save the life of a Vietnamese-American student dying of leukemia in San Jose, Calif.

“It would be a wonderful gesture to show that Vietnam and America can do something together,” Dr. Arnold Schecter told reporters.

Schecter left Vietnam on Friday after an unsuccessful attempt to get blood samples from family members of 20-year-old Bui Anh. If tests determine that Anh’s tissue type is compatible with his family members in Vietnam, he could receive bone marrow transplants from them.

Anh’s mother and five sisters still live in Vietnam. His father and brother live in San Jose.

Schecter, a professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Binghamton, wrote retired Gen. John W. Vessey Jr. and appealed for “immediate assistance for a dying Vietnamese-American boy,” after the general arrived in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital.