Ban on bone marrow sales challenged in US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

A major victory for people in need of bone marrow transplants may be on the horizon.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Feb. 15 in a case that challenges a ban on bone marrow sales. Federal law prohibits the sale of human organs and places renewable bone marrow in a vital organ category, along with non-renewable kidneys and livers.

Violators currently receive a felony charge and face up to five years in prison.

“There’s a concern that if we commodify human body parts, we will devolve into an unsavory society where people are, quite literally, worth only the sum of their parts,” said Dr. Julie Cantor, an adjunct professor of law at UCLA and a national expert on health law.

Bone marrow is a spongy, fluid-filled tissue found in bones, and it is valued because it contains stem cells that can be used to treat diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma.

Arguments against bone marrow sales include a possible decrease in the number of voluntary donations and a discriminatory impact on the poor. Some argue that only the rich can afford organ donations, Cantor said.

But Cantor said the ban is an anachronism.

“There may have been a time and a place for it, but it doesn’t make sense anymore today,” she said.

When the law was first enacted, drawing bone marrow was a painful surgical procedure during which a long needle was inserted into the patient’s hip bone.

However, medical advances in recent years have made the procedure more comparable to donating blood.

Providing compensation to donors would help attract a larger donor pool, said Berkley Brown, a nurse practitioner at UCLA who specializes in hematology and oncology.

The Department of Pediatrics alone oversees about 30 transplants a year, with an 80 percent success rate, Brown said. From 1968 to the end of 2007, the bone marrow transplant program at UCLA has performed 3,726 transplants, according to the department’s website.

The case, Flynn v. Holder, began in October 2009 when Doreen Flynn, a single mother from Maine, filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court. Three of Flynn’s five children were born with a deadly blood disease, Fanconi anemia.

Her three children will require bone marrow transplants when in their teens.

Faced with the prospect of not finding available donors, Flynn joined forces with MoreMarrowDonors.org to educate the public about the need for more marrow donors.

More than 3,000 Americans die a year because they are unable to obtain a compatible bone marrow donor, according to the website for the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm and chief litigator of the case.

Bone marrow drives are commonly held on campus by various student health organizations. This month, the Persian American Society for Health Advancement sponsored a drive in conjunction with the National Marrow Donor Program, and the New Cancer Mentality organization held a drive to benefit cancer patients stricken by bone marrow diseases.

David Farzam, a fourth-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student and organizer of a recent bone marrow drive, said donors should contribute regardless of whether they receive compensation.

However, Farzam said he did not think a lifting of the ban would make a difference in the size of the donor pool at UCLA.

A ruling on the case may be reached within the next few months.