Question: Why does Mrs Perez tell Catherine that they couldn't find a marrow donor for Daniel because he's mixed race? I thought it didn't matter what race you are when it came to donating organs or blood, as long as the blood types match or were compatible.
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Answer: What is often called bone marrow transplants is the transplant of hematopoietic stem cell. Instead of blood type match, patients need to be an HLA match (human leukocyte antigen). There's a lower percentage of matching one's HLA type with a random person than blood type. When it comes to matching human HLA types, a person's ethnic background is important in finding a match because the HLA markers used in matching are inherited, and some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others. A person's best chance of finding a donor may be with someone of the same ethnic background, meaning someone on the registry would have to be of mixed race as well. At the time, the total number of multiple race donors in the registry was very low (I don't have the figures for 2004, but in 2014 there were less than 500,000 multiple race donors).
Bishop73