How does ethnicity affect the reliability and success of bone marrow transplants?
Bone marrow transplants are most successful when the donor and recipient are more genetically similar, and in particular, have the same 6 HLA genes. It just so happens that you are more likely to find an HLA match within your own race or ethnic group (or ideally from your own family) than you are from a different ethnic group. This is simply an observation from the experiences of physicians searching for matches for their patients in the bone marrow registry, not a theoretical concern. It also just so happens that far more caucasians volunteer to be in the bone marrow registry than people in other ethnic groups, so non-caucasians tend to have a harder time finding a good match in the registry. This has nothing to do with anybody being racist. If an African American found a good HLA match in the registry with a caucasian donor, by all means s/he would get the transplant. But the odds of finding a good HLA match are best among people in your own ethnic group.
