Giving transplant patients the gift of life
Founder of a rare-marrow registry, Jay Feinberg works to find the missing pieces for cancer patients
by Galen Motin Goff
In his inspirational writings, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner imagines that life consists of 1,000 interlocking puzzle pieces that we must fit together before we die at a ripe old age. The problem is we are each missing several pieces, which seem to exist randomly in the puzzles of others. At any time, during any act, we may give away a piece we don’t need or receive a crucial piece from a stranger.
This interdependence is a concept Jay Feinberg understands well. In fact, on a daily basis he facilitates the exchange of precious pieces that for more than 1,000 people have proved to be the gift of life. In the process of undergoing a long, difficult search for a matching bone-marrow transplant donor to treat his leukemia, Feinberg created a network of donors of rare ethnic heritage. Through his Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation in Boca Raton, Fla., he helps patients find matching donors who volunteer their bone marrow, blood stem cells and umbilical-cord blood for transplants.
Humanitarian award
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Jay Feinberg, left, director of The Gift of Life Foundation, received a successful transplant from Becky Faibisoff. |
Feinberg’s mission to save lives began in 1991 with the diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia at age 22. To survive, he would need a bone-marrow transplant. Only 5 percent of the 1 million people then in marrow-donor databases were of his Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and no one was a match.
“I remember my first consultation at Fred Hutchinson with Dr. John Hansen. He reassured me that although there were no suitable matches in the international donor pool, I shouldn’t give up hope,” Feinberg said. “He encouraged my family to organize donor-recruitment drives to find a match and to target the Jewish population to maximize my chances.”
From that consultation, The Gift of Life Foundation was born. Over the next four years, donor drives tested more than 60,000 people around the world. While other patients found matches, Feinberg was not so fortunate. As he prepared to go to Seattle for a risky mismatched-donor transplant, one last donor-recruitment drive in Milwaukee identified a match with a blood-drive volunteer. Too young when the rest of her family was tested for Feinberg years earlier, Becky Faibisoff held the life-giving missing piece. Feinberg received the transplant in July 1995 at Fred Hutchinson.
“Knowing that I helped save someone’s life helps me get through hard times of my own,” Faibisoff said. “It reminds me that there is a purpose and meaning in the world; nothing is random.”
Today, Feinberg is the only transplant survivor at the helm of a donor organization. Gift of Life — 12th largest among 53 donor registries in 39 countries — is unique in North America in that it works to increase donors whose bloodlines were severed by the Holocaust.
Ethnic heritage
Successful at adding Ashkenazi donors to the pool, Gift of Life (http://www.giftoflife.org) is now working to increase representation of people of Sephardic Jewish background. It is also a model for other organizations that focus on donor recruitment in specific ethnic populations.
“Each of us can make a difference by contributing whatever resources and abilities we have,” he said. “The Bronfman prize has enabled me to support my charitable priorities in a substantial way. I support Fred Hutchinson because of its outstanding staff and volunteers, quality of care and extraordinary knowledge base.
“There is a saying amongst Jews that all Israel is responsible for one another. I believe this extends to us all,” Feinberg said. “If we have the opportunity to help another person in need, I believe it is our duty to do so.” And for Feinberg there can be no greater thing in this world to give or receive than the gift of life.
