Why is there a weight limit for donating bone marrow?
Most of the restrictions on donating bone marrow have to do with risk to the recipient. Fair enough: who wants to get cured of cancer only to get HIV?
Others have to do with risk to the donor. Also fair: we don't want to kill a healthy person in exchange for saving a sick one.
But obesity? Given that the sites encouraging donation make a point about how low-risk donating is, why is obesity in-and-of-itself a problem? I understand why common complications associated with obesity (like diabetes or heart disease) would be an issue, but (to put it bluntly) what if someone is just fat?
As someone who has been obese virtually my entire life, I don't understand this one. I am 29 years old with blood pressure on the low side of normal, normal blood sugars, normal cholesterol and I rarely get sick. Oh, and I've been a regular blood donor for 12 years (yes, since I was 17).
If my little brother (or someone else I loved) needed marrow, I would insist on being tested as a match and, if I matched, I would insist on being allowed to donate, regardless of risk. But how much risk is there really? And if it is a relatively low risk, shouldn't I be allowed to decide whether I am willing to take that risk on behalf of a stranger?
Flatpaw, do you have a reference for that? Because the idea that removing a small amount of flexible tissue from inside the outer structural parts of the bones would cause them to be unable to support my "freight" seems decidedly nonsensical from an engineering and biological sense.
And I the reason I asked this question was to figure out if this rule is "there for a reason" and, if so, what that reason is.