The Institute for Justice gathered most of this information from Be The Match, a national nonprofit organization that operates the Be The Match Registry. 

• Each year 12,000 individuals are diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers or another disease such as sickle cell for which a blood stem cell transplant is the best or only option for care. ¹  
• A blood stem cell transplant can treat or cure more than 75 different diseases including leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell, immune-deficiency disorders, and many more. ²
• Approximately 70% of patients don’t have a fully matched donor in their family, and therefore rely on an unrelated donor. ³
• Young adults of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds are among the most needed patients for patients searching for a match. In particular, adults between the ages of 18 to 35 are urgently needed because they’re requested by transplant doctors most often. ⁴
• A patient’s chance of finding a matched, available donor on the Be The Match Registry ranges from 29% to 79% depending on the patient’s ethnic background. ⁵
• African American patients have a 29% chance of finding a donor match. ⁶
• Asian or Pacific Islander patients have a 47% chance of finding a donor match. ⁷
• Hispanic or Latino patients have a 48% chance of finding a donor match. ⁸
• Native American patients have a 60% chance of finding a donor match. ⁹
• White patients have a 79% chance of finding a donor match. ¹⁰
• Every 3 minutes one person in the United States is diagnosed with a blood cancer. ¹¹
• An estimated combined total of 184,720 people in the United States are expected to be diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma this year. ¹²
• New cases of leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma are expected to account for more than 9% of the new cancer cases that will be diagnosed in the United States this year. ¹³

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