• April
American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (ASPH/O)
23rd Annual Meeting
April 7-10
Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Acute Leukemia Forum 2010 Advances and Controversies in the Biology and Therapy of Acute Leukemia and Myelodysplasia
Hemedicus Acute Leukemia Forum
April 9
Parc 55
San Francisco, California

American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
101st Annual Meeting
April 17-21
Washington Convention Center
Washington, D.C.

Bioprocessing and Barriers to Clinical Applications of Stem Cell Therapies
5th Annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium
April 21
BioPharmaceutical Technology Center
Madison, Wisconsin

John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center
Current and Innovative Modalities in the Management of Hematologic Malignancies
April 23
The Hekemian Conference Center Auditorium
Hackensack, New Jersey

• May
American Transplant Congress
American Society of Transplantation (AST)
May 1-5
San Diego Convention Center
San Diego, California

Immunology 2010
American Association of Immunologists (AAI)
May 7-11
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, Maryland

14th Annual International Congress of Hematologic Malignancies: Focus on Leukemias, Lymphomas and Myelomas
Physicians’ Education Resource
May 17-21
Fairmont Château Whistler
Whistler, British Columbia, Canada

American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT)
13th Annual Meeting
May 17-22
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Washington, D.C.

International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
16th Annual Meeting
May 23-26
Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

American Society for Apheresis (ASFA)
30th Annual Meeting
May 26-29
Sheraton New Orleans Hotel
New Orleans, Louisiana

• June
8th Annual International Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation Symposium
Cord Blood Forum
June 3-5
Hyatt Regency San Francisco at Embarcadero Center
San Francisco, California

American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
46th Annual Meeting
June 4-8
McCormick Place
Chicago, Illinois

European Hematology Association (EHA)
15th Congress
June 10-13
The Gran Via Conference Center
Barcelona, Spain

8th International Donor Registry Conference
World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA)
June 16-19
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland

International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)
8th Annual Meeting
June 16-19
Moscone Center
San Francisco, California

FOCIS 2010
Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS)
June 24-28
Boston Marriott Copley Place
Boston, Massachusetts

• July
UK National Stem Cell Network (UKNSCN)
Annual Science Meeting
July 12-14
University of Nottingham, East Midlands Conference Center
Nottingham, England, United Kingdom

Cryo 2010
Society for Cryobiology
47th Annual Meeting
July 17-20
Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel
Bristol, England, United Kingdom

• August
Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST)
Annual Scientific Conference
Aug. 13-14
Vancouver Congress Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

• September
ISCT Europe Regional Meeting
International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
Sept. 11-14
Best Western Hotel Villa Carlotta
Belgirate, Italy

A Word from President John Barrett, MD

Deep in my basement, stacked between old tape recorders, cord telephones (remember them?) and other remnants of defunct technologies, is a bag of a few thousand projection slides from past lectures. One venerable magenta-faded slide reads simply “DONORS are not PATIENTS!” It was important in those days of marrow harvesting to underline the respect and care that should be awarded to individuals who were prepared to undergo the inconvenience and discomfort of the procedure. Today’s donors are as likely to be unrelated as family members, and are increasingly asked to give mobilized peripheral blood rather than the more scary marrow donation. The question arises, is it sufficient, like Blanche Dubois, to depend on the kindness of strangers submitting to the inconvenience and minimal, but definable, risk of the stem cell collection, or should we compensate them? If so, how much? Implicit in the National Organ Transplantation act of 1984 (although it does not specifically mention bone marrow transplantation) is the prohibition of payment to stem cell donors. This law is consistent with a world-wide perception that the voluntary nature of donation of blood or marrow avoids the vulnerability of obtaining bad products from donors unfit to donate, seeking to sell their blood or marrow. And, why fix something that does not appear to be broken? The figure of 10 million marrow donors worldwide does not attest to a serious shortage of unpaid volunteers.

Enter the Institute for Justice
The issue of donor payment has recently been raised in a constitutional challenge to the 1984 act, filed in Federal District Court this year by the Institute for Justice. The institute is seeking permission to proceed with a plan to compensate hematopoietic stem cell donors at the time of donation. A pilot program is proposed to determine if incentives such as scholarships, housing allowance or a charitable gift increase the number of marrow-cell donations.

ASBMT, together with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), America’s Blood Centers (ABC), AABB (formerly American Association of Blood Banks), American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, International Society of Cellular Therapy, American Society of Transplantation and the World Marrow Donor Association, have come out against any change in the law. We are concerned about the violation of a long-established code of non-compensation for blood donors set by the World Health Organization, and the possibility that paid donors may be more likely to withhold medical details and personal activities that could put both the patient and donor at risk. And, why increase the incentive for individuals to donate?

NMDP is already set to double the number of unrelated donor transplants in the next few years, and ASBMT is concerned that the capacity of the hospitals and staffs will be outstripped by the ever-increasing availability of patients with matched donors. Indeed, the logistics of handling a significant increase in the number of allogeneic stem cell transplants is the topic of an NMDP-organized conference to which hospital administrators will be invited later this year. A decision by the Department of Justice whether to change the payment rule, as it applies to stem cell donors, will be made in the next few weeks.

Whatever the decision, it is timely to review the law as it relates to stem cell donors and their recipients. Currently, the amount of donor compensation for out-of-pocket expenses and lost wages varies from state to state. We should support the application of uniform rules governing compensation for expenses for unrelated donors. What does our membership think? Please use the Reader Poll in the left-hand column. Meanwhile, nostalgic as I feel for those long-forgotten lectures in their charmingly named carousels, I am throwing them out. After all, the projectors to display them will be obsolete when the last bulb blows. For better or worse, we are in the PowerPoint age. That is some compensation. How we ever managed to pull a lecture together without electronic systems is hard now to imagine.