Category: Cinema 31
Just saw that 11 year old Shannon Tavarez, who played the role of Nala in Broadway version of THE LION KING, has passed away from leukemia. What makes this story especially sad & close to home is this child was racially mixed (Hispanic from the Dominican Republic father & black mother from the US), which made it more difficult to find a bone marrow donor (these are matched by race & it is more difficult to find donors of a specific mix). I had a colleague whose northern European/Latino son passed away after a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated individual, and my daughter is racially mixed (north African & northern European). I can only have faith Mimi doesn't get this disease & feel awful for anyone who does.
I did not know that race contributed to bone marrow transplants. My kids are biracial too, (father is black and I am white). Wow... So sad...:(
Yet another reason against having biracial children, based in biology not cultural views. This is, as has been said, truly a sad case. I hate it when children get life-threatening diseases and it's heartbreaking when they die of them, particularly at such a young age. Gods bless her spirit and her family.
I didn't know they were race based either until I met the Irish/Cuban family with the leukemic son. The bone marrow transplant registry tries to match donor to recipient as much as possible, including racial background, to make the donation as similar as possible thus least likely to be rejected.
Strangely enough the child received a transplant from a woman in another country, and it was survival that actually killed him. Before the transplant a massive amount of chemotherapy and radiation is supposed to kill off the patient's own immune system so the transplanted marrow can take over. This nine year old's immune system survived, thus rejecting the transplant, and an ensuing stroke killed him.
Awww so sad...
Wow, that's terrible!