My friend Stacie has been distraught ever since she learned a month ago that her beloved cousin, Tami, has an early form of blood cancer. She has been frantically working in the last month to find a bone marrow donor for Tami, which is much more difficult because she is Asian-American. Another reason she is distressed is that the testing process to find a match takes such a long time and Tami is doing so poorly. She may die before she finds a match.

She brought two other people with her, the Executive Director of the Asian American Donor Program, and James Nguyen, who is seeking a match for his best friend. Finding a bone marrow match is peculiarly racist. A Japanese patient will largely find a donor match only from other Japanese people. However, there’s only a 30% chance of finding the donor in your family. The odds start getting slim for ethnic minorities because not as big a proportion have registered their type. Hopefully this episode can improve that number somewhat.