Joe Barton: “I want to call a time-out on some of our other debate for today and bring to the attention of my colleagues a young…”

“I want to call a time-out on some of our other debate for today and bring to the attention of my colleagues a young girl, 6 years old, named Emily Kim. Emily is very bright, very beautiful, and unfortunately, she is dying of leukemia. This spring doctors gave her and her parents only 6 months for her to live. There is still hope, though. A bone marrow transfusion could save her life, literally, and doctors are hoping to find a bone marrow donor, a genetic match that is almost like finding a needle in a haystack, 1 in 100,000. It is even tougher because Kim is an Asian American, and not many Asian Americans have signed up with the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry. So I am calling on my colleagues to contact their constituents in the Asian American community and ask them to take a simple test to see if they might be that one-in-a-one hundred thousand donor match for young Emily. You must be 18 to 60 years old and in good health. I know how important this is, because my brother died of liver cancer last year. We could not find a liver match that would have saved my brother's life, but we might save Emily's life. Take a few minutes, go to www.marrow.org, or contact your doctor or local office of the American Cancer Society. Working together, my colleagues, we may yet find that one-in-a-thousand donor match for young Emily Kim.”