Police Offering Tests for Potential Bone Marrow Donors

What Sgt. Bill Clements thought was a strained back muscle last April turned out to be a bone-eating cancer called multiple myeloma.

The cancer had slowly begun to eat away at the vertebrae in his lower back. Within months, he desperately needed a bone marrow transplant.

Fortunately for the father of four, doctors were able to use stem cells from his own marrow to perform a life-saving transplant. But Clements knows that few people suffering from other forms of leukemia will be so lucky.

That’s why Tuesday, in the basement of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division, he joined fellow LAPD officers and the American Red Cross in promoting the multi-agency donor drive. The bone marrow testing day was aimed at increasing the pool of potential bone marrow donors, especially those from minority groups.

Of the nearly 4 million people registered to be donors, about 86% are white, data from the program show.

Volunteer donors are critical because leukemia patients who cannot find a compatible family donor are more likely to find a match with someone of their own racial or ethnic group, according to the congressionally authorized National Marrow Donor Program.

Doctors say bone marrow transplants are the best chance for people with acute forms of leukemia, because healthy marrow cells can help strengthen faulty immune systems.

“We need more minorities,” said LAPD Sgt. Brian Johnson, one of the organizers of the drive, which seeks to register 10,000 possible donors by June. It has registered about 100 so far, he said.

“As you can see, we need a lot more community support.”

Tuesday’s drive was the third of nine scheduled this month by organizers, but the first outside the LAPD headquarters downtown.

Bob Hansohn, the Rampart Division’s captain, said the neighborhood offers a large pool of possible Latino donors.

Los Angeles police became involved in organizing the Southland drives after LAPD Deputy Chief David Gascon visited Hawaii and learned about Honolulu Police Capt. Alvin Nishimura’s bout with a type of leukemia.

Gascon pledged the department’s help with the drive to aid Nishimura because it had experience organizing such events, and several LAPD officers and their relatives had been diagnosed with leukemia.

But when LAPD officers contacted the American Red Cross to help the Honolulu officer, they learned about three Anaheim officers, two children of Anaheim officers and an Orange lieutenant who also have leukemia.

Organizers said that while the drive began as an effort to find bone marrow donors to save the lives of the officers and their colleagues’ children, it has now become a tool to help the more than 33,000 adults and children diagnosed nationwide each year with some form of leukemia.

Organizers said that people resist signing up at bone marrow registries because donors are often asked to pay for their blood tests and because they lack awareness of how easy it is to give bone marrow. But organizers are raising $210,000 to pay for a $21 blood test for 10,000 donors and explaining the importance of bone marrow donations to donors.

The next multi-agency donor drive will be held Thursday at 11 a.m. at the 77th Street Division.