MySQL hacker needs $400K for his son's bone-marrow transplant
He's got $50 from me."My family got bad news - doctors said allogenic bone marrow transplantation is the only chance for my son Ivan.
"8 months of heavy and expensive immune suppression brought some positive results so we hoped that recovering is just question of time.
"Ivan is very brave boy - not every human meets so much suffering during whole life, like Ivan already met in his 2,5 years. But long road is still in front of us to get full recover - we are ready to come it through.
"Ukrainian clinics have no technical possibility to do such complex operation, so we need 150-250K EUR for Israel or European or US clinic. The final decision will be made considering amount we able to find. Perhaps my family is able to get ~60% of that by selling the flat where parents leave and some other goods, but we still require external help."
Donate to help Andrii Nikitin's son Ivan (Thanks, Danny!)
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$50 from me too.
Good luck Ivan.
And from me.
Paypal link seems to be broken.
Me too, there's lots of hacker love in the world. Good luck.
Boost the signal and repost Cory's BB message!
I am so lucky to live in a country with socialized medical care right now. Even with subsidies, it is very expensive for any family in crisis, and I wonder if my parents and my brother's family would have their houses right now if we were living somewhere else, because these procedures and everything leading up to it are extremely costly.
By the way, $400,000 is right on target for bone marrow transplants in case readers are wondering. I have had to research and confirm this price myself for my brother.
Samantha Macrae of Australia is also trying to raise money for her husband, Graham Barnell, who already had his transplant in Seattle, and there recovering. She has raised about US$350 000 and needs US$150 000 more for her husband's lifesaving treatment.
As of September 23rd, she is also looking for about 34 000 more United Airlines or Quantas points so her mother, who is helping with the kids, can fly from Oz to Seattle.
This is shocking.
Health should be free to all.
Doesn't anyone think it is strange that this procedure can cost 400.000 dollars? The marrow donor doesn't get any of that money.
You need a team of doctors and nurses and an anesthesiologist -- maybe 8 people -- who perform the operation. Let's say that operation takes 10 hours (which I'm sure it doesn't because they can separate Siamese Twins connected at the head in that amount of time) that's 80 hours.
Say everyone, even the nurses, makes 1000 dollars an hour. That's 80,000 dollars.
Maybe there is some special equipment -- but since all the equipment in the hospital is reused but other patients it isn't like you are buying the machines and surgical instruments outright, so at most! 10,000 for machine/instrument-time rental. Throw in another 1000 dollars for drugs, 3000 for the room, 10,000 for follow up visits...
(I think that the numbers I am making up are absurdly over the top by the way...I cannot imagine that it would cost 10,000 for a follow up visit !)
All that, added up = 94,000. Even double it = 188,000.
I suck at math, so these figures maybe have been tabulated incorrectly, but I honestly don't see where all the money goes -- if it goes places that are ethical and just to help other humans when they need help most (as I, in my naivety, imagine that it should).
20 from me. Please give us an update and let us know if they get all the money they need.
@#7 - I have no idea what the specific expenses are, but if a broken arm (compound fracture -- broken skin and leaking marrow) with 3 days in the hospital can cost $40,000 (luckily covered by insurance), I'm amazed that this costs only that much. I would imagine that the kid needs to stay many many days in a hospital room, and that there are a ton of drugs and follow up care required too.
Of course, I agree that it's barbaric to make people pay to be healthy.
@#7: There are quite a lot of related costs. You figured out some, like the cost of the room and medication, which by the way is way too low. The patient stays in the hospital for a minimum of 30 days, sometimes about 45, for the transplant procedure (chemo/radiotherapy beforehand, transplantation day, average 30 days of isolation).
That cost also pays for everything the donor needs. Before a donation, the donor must go through a number of medical tests, to ensure their safety and that of the recipient. The donor doesn't get anything financial, but they don't pay anything either, because the registry and the patient is covering it. This includes any travel or accommodation, if needed.
It's a good question. Call your local hospital that is also a transplantation centre, and if you live in the States, the National Marrow Donor Progra for further clarification.
7 and 9, the really sad thing to me is that if it was done at a US hospital and billed to the insurance company, the hospital would probably get less than half of the original amount. But if they bill it to the patient, the patient has to pay the full $400k, no ifs ands or buts.
Simple, specific example: My brother had an MRI and we had to pay over $1900 for it. Same hospital, same procedure, a little later, but with insurance? The insurance company paid a little over $900. Why? Because they negotiate the costs for specific services. So the exact people that can't afford to pay for medical care are charged over twice as much for that medical care. Ohio tried to bring about a law that would mandate that hospitals charge the same for a given procedure regardless of funding source or insurance status, and the hospital lobbyists killed it crying that they would go bankrupt if it passed.
That, to me, is criminal.
I hope little Ivan and his father get help and he is able to be made healthy.
BB's previous bone marrow donor posts directly caused at least one person I know to become a donor.
MySQL is a Swedish company, right? Sweden has socialized health care. Couldn't they just bring the guy to sweeden on some kind of work visa?
SLoP: You failed to mention any post-operative costs. I'm sure the follow up treatments, drugs, therapy, nurse care, etc., would easily be over $400k.
Fer chrissakes, my wife had a healthy, complication-free c-section baby and was in the hospital for 3-1/2 days total and the bill to our insurance co. was $54,000! Such is the robbery that is the US "system".
My mother had me 45 years ago for $250.
Cost of the medication is all gratuitous profit margins for pharma companies - drug prices are typically about a hundred times more than the cost of manufacture. You can argue all day about what the true cost of development is, but the simple fact remains that they're making hundreds of millions of dollars a year in executive bonuses and shareholder payouts, and that money has to come from somewhere. Most of it comes from exploiting the sick and desperate.
@#12 I'm glad you wrote that. Every time I see that someone registered, I'm happy. I think I'm not the only one who reads that who feels the same way.
@#13 You go where the best care is for the specific case. Countries have different rates of success for different types of cases. Also, if Sweden is anything like Canada, non-citizens do not get any help and still have to cover everything themselves.
@13- He's an Ukrainian, not a Swede and lives in Ukraine, so he's subject to Ukraine's laws and Public Health System, if there's one, I don't know. You had to see if the Swedish law would cover his case -- which I doubt-- and even so he's not an employee in the classical sense of the word. He's an contributor for the MySQL community, not an employee.
I'm saddened for his predicament, and hope everything turns out fine. This is a worthy cause to donate, IMHO, if I could -- I don't have a credit card -- I would donate as well.
$50 from me too, SPWS runs on MySQL + Drupal.
I'll spread the message around. I wish I could help, but I have my own medical problems (while not as serious as that) and cannot work right now.
We really need to work for universal healthcare - universally. Everyone deserves equal access, and I think the most disturbing thing about this is that he has to go overseas to get it done.
I guess I just think that it all boils down to labor, spaces, chemicals and time.
I just don't see how the necessary labor, spaces, chemicals and time add up to 400,000 dollars.
I don't think there should be "profits" where health care is involved.
"healthy, complication-free c-section baby and was in the hospital for 3-1/2 days total and the bill to our insurance co. was $54,000!"
It would be -amazingly- helpful to see, in detail, how such a bill can be justified. Because it sure seems insane.
Do you know why there is no contest “10 richest kids in Ukraine”? ‘Cause there is no competition whatsoever. There is just one champion. And his name is Andriy Victorovych Yushchenko, Ukrainian president’s eldest son.
http://eng.maidanua.org/node/356
The lifestyle of Mr Yushchenko's eldest son has also left journalists asking questions.
Where does a 19-year-old get a Vertu mobile phone and a $100,000 BMW, while paying a peppercorn rent to "friends" for a luxury flat? Might someone be trying to buy influence with the president by providing his son with these riches?
http://blog.kievukraine.info/2005/10/ukraine-torn-by-broken-promises.html
I'm reminded of the Olympic gymnast who competed and won a silver medal in Beijing. Her young son contracted leukemia, and there were no adequate faciities to treat him in her native Uzbekistan. The German government paid for the treatment in exchange for her to compete on the team. At 33, she seemed an unlikely competitor, but ended up winning silver in the vault.
I thought it was the best story from the entire olympics. Her son is now a healthy five year old gymnast himself. This disease can be cured with the right treatment. I hope the family is able to find a way.
Now's also a great time to get yourself entered into the National Marrow Registry. (See www.marrow.org if you're in the US)
Finding a proper "match" for a marrow transplant is dependent on a huge number of factors, and there are many patients for whom no matches are available. By joining the pool, you can help increase their chances just a tiny bit.
There *is* a fee to join the registry, which can be waived in some cases (esp. ethnic minority groups who are currently underrepresented in the registry). However, given that a marrow transplant is literally a "lifesaving" procedure, it's a pretty solid "humanitarian investment" to make.
"help increase their chances just a tiny bit."
no,no,no and gently and firmly no. It is not a "tiny bit", it is a very, very large bit indeed. Please I beg of you, never, never trivialize this manner of thing. In these matters at this time in their development, any who register and any who donate figure as giants. We can only hope in the fullness of time that marrow donation becomes mundane, but for now at least, those who make this gesture are worthy of extraordinary praise. As you said, this is a "life saving procedure". Save a life.
Does having a Paypal account mean you'll ever be sent any sort of mail to do with the account? I need to create one to donate, but I can't have mail sent to my home address.
Anyone have experience with this to know?
Tenn@26, Paypal will send you email, but doesn't send anything through snail mail. Only time that might happen would be if you use Paypal to order a tangible whatsit.
Also, phishing scams involving PayPal (and ebay, which owns PayPal) are out there, but you can always recognize the phishers since they call you "Dear PayPal member," while legit email from the company will use the name on your account in the salutation.
@26 You don't need a PayPal account to make a donation or payment via PayPal. I do it all the time, including for this cause.
Thank you, Zippy & Tamu.
$30 from me.
If you have Myspace, consider bulletinning it. If you have a Facebook, consider updating your status. Let's reach the people who don't read BoingBoing.
Tenn-chan; I can imagine how long it takes you to earn thirty after tax dollars. (bow).
Taku-san: Not so much time. I can earn $30 in two shifts, if they're good shifts. Besides, what the hell am I going to spend it on? (curtsy) But all bows from my sensai Cephalopod much appreciated.
Taking into account that time is short and it's not easy to get US$450Kilos + travel expenses + hotel & other expenses I'm doing a donation and suggesting that an alternative could be the "Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein" or the "Hospital Sirio Libanês" both in SP/Brazil. The second is a reference center in oncology.
yup $50 from me as well. i use mysql daily in several apps. godspeed in reaching your goal, andrii and ivan.
god bless you ivan. love kami.
ps, i just sent some $ 2 ivan. godspeed sweetheart. kami
I meant to sign up for the registry last year, when there was a drive for a match for a girl at my school (though she was Asian), and again when a contributor to a site I read was diagnosed with leukemia. I was too forgetful/lazy both times to go to the drive or find out how to sign up. This post gave me the final push. Once I get home for the summer, I'm going to have the registry kit sent to me.
Also, reading the marrow.org site, I don't see why so many people think it's too much of a sacrifice. Yes, it can be a disruption if you're ever called upon to donate, but it's nothing in comparison to saving someone's life.
I make a living off L.A.M.P. $100 USD is the least I can do. All the best Ivan
Wish I could, but my bank account is running dry-ish. As soon as i get some money...
Just got $20 from me. Wish I could give more. I have two toddlers around this age and can't imagine how they try to help him cope. Poor baby!
As for outrageous medical expenses, this doesn't surprise me in the least. I recently had gall bladder surgery and they checked me in and out in under two hours (surgery took 30 minutes). Between that and a few scans of my sick gut, I'm $20,000 in debt!
$20 from me (£11.15 at todays exchange rate).
I'd be curious to know how much he raises. And how the lad fares!
Which reminds me: BoingBoingers ought to register with a marrow donation database, such as the Anthony Nolan Trust.
http://www.anthonynolan.org.uk/
Hypocritically, I am not registered. Will shortly amend this oversight.
Donating $100 from Norway, as the USD is at an all-time low... Good luck to the kid and his family.
The link on mysql.com goes to a search page: http://search.mysql.com/search?q=help-ivan.html&lr=lang_en
anyone else having same problem?
It seems the donation page has been taken down.
I'm the guy that originally alerted BoingBoing to the link. I just checked in with mySQL's PR guy about the page being taken down, and this was his response:
***
I do know the little boy is doing better -- he responded well to the treatment at a German clinic, so that they don't think he'll need the full bone marrow transplant (very good news).
He is back in Ukriane[sic] now undergoing further evaluation & treatment.
I'll check on the donation status.
***
So I'm not sure if it was an old page, or what - but I'm still exchanging emails with their PR team, so I will post more news and any messages from Andrii as and when I get them, and will maybe get them to put up a new page in its place with further updates on Ivan's health.
Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to donate. I love the power of BoingBoing :-)
Dan
Dan,
I was wondering if you could help me get in touch with the appropriate folks at MySQL?
My company sponsors charities (and charitable causes) using our distributed computing technology. Basically people go to a charity's website embedded with our tech, they help do some distributed computing for us, and we pay the charity for that. It's just a quick and easy way to drive more revenue to different charities.
If Ivan still needs donations, we can probably quickly generate a good chunk of money with enough people connected to a Plura-Ivan page, but I was hoping to work with the folks at MySQL to accomplish this more efficiently.
I've already set up the page at http://www.pluraprocessing.com/helpivan.html.
If you could help me get in touch with the right people, that would be pretty cool!
- Shion
"This is shocking.
Health should be free to all."
That would be very cool. Of course we might have a tough time finding doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers who are willing to work for no pay. Finding free real estate to build hospitals with free construction materials might be a problem too. Then there's the issue of researching and developing free medication.
I agree that health care is outrageously expensive, but I can't see any feasible way that top quality health care could ever be free.
I can't seem to get to the donation page. I get redirected to a Search Results page, listing two links for donating to the fund, but clicking on either of them just redirects me to... you guessed it... the search results page.
I'll keep checking back, but for now, at least I can get registered with http://www.marrow.org/
Of course not. "Top quality health care" naturally means new, rare, or extremely complicated procedures that have very little chance of success, but which happen anyway as a means to bilk desperate parents out of the life savings of them and their immediate family (and usually just resulting in them losing everything else as well as their child). No reasonable government would ever pay for such procedures, but it's almost impossible to stop the parents from doing it anyway.
This does not mean that things have to be as bad as they currently are. There is no reason why routine, reliable treatments can't be free. I know this because I live in a country where they are - the system could be better, but it's definitely possible.
I have no idea whether this particular procedure will help this particular kid - I'm not his doctor. That's not the point, I'm talking about the general problem. This kind of thing does happen, it won't go away, and it means a perfect solution is unobtainable. We will just have to settle for less greedy, exploitative health care, rather than none at all.
#7, and et. al., This weekend I participated in a Bone Marrow Drive. (My son has leukemea and while he doesn't need a BMT now, we are hedging our bets) The odds of any one donor being a match in their life time is 1:20,000 (according to NMDP). The cost of the test that puts your data in the database is $52. So, it is over $1,000,000 just to find one non-related donor.
Not to mention the months of hospital time (in a more expensive isolation ward) required before and after the transplant as the immune systems is wiped out and then brought back.
I went to donate and got the same search page that previous posters indicate.
If Ivan needs the money, I definitely want to donate.
Cory, if it turns out Ivan does need the transplant and doesn't have the money for it, could you be sure to post it again to BoingBoing?
""Top quality health care" naturally means new, rare, or extremely complicated procedures that have very little chance of success"
I think you and I define "top quality" differently. For example, I consider places like Johns Hopkins and The Cleveland Clinic as offering top quality cardiac care. They certainly have a much higher success rate than other hospitals in that area.
"There is no reason why routine, reliable treatments can't be free. I know this because I live in a country where they are - the system could be better, but it's definitely possible."
Where do you live? How did they manage to convince medical staff in your country to work for no pay?
Hi everyone.
The real link to mySQL site containing their publication is http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/news/ on the "Developer News" page but is so tiny that is hardly found. It's burried between son many informations, long enough to be put into a newspaper, describing how successful Sun's products are and how many good deals have been made from the company recently.
This is what you will find there:
"19 July 2008 — Donations are requested to help Andrii Nikitin, a MySQL support engineer in Ukraine, provide for his son Ivan who requires a bone marrow transplant operation. The cost of this operation is expected to be between €150,000 - €250,000 ($235,000 - $400,000). Please help us provide Ivan a chance to live."
This is a horror people. It's about the life of a so young child. They should be ashamed. Andrii works for them and make THEM PROFIT but gets none but just 5 lines of simpathy.
This cannot be true.
When I saw this for the first time yesterday, I just decided - spread is the only major help we can provide. So I started. You can do the same, but to make these posts to be with goog rankings put links to one another and visit the posts as frequently as possible and comment to the others posts. This will prevent from archiving the information, will rise its popularity and will make it most probable that it will be on the first page of most of the blogs. This way more people will be able to read it, so we can hope that more people will actually help.
This is the link to my blog from the last night http://drtech-peopleinneed.blogspot.com/. It is in Bulgarian, because I am one, but there are the original posts with sources provided. Please visit and comment. I will try to put news as frequently as I get some and will try to find some recipient info about direct payment and put it there, for those who need to donate, just to be sure that the money go to the right place.
As you will see the blog is advertisings-free, it is not humane to try do make profit of others suffering, so put links to it in your blog, if you have one, and make a comment with link to your blog in to make me able to create some link list to help indexing.
We are all using mySQL as a "man-in-the-shadow" party, even when we are using blogs, so if you are capable to help with money DO IT. If you have not enough resources to so that, then spred the word at least and hope for the best for the little boy.
Regards to all, Lets change the world. This could be the first step.
FYI for those who are still looking to help, the news item at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/news/ mentioned in #53 just goes to the same defunct link, http://www.mysql.com/about/help-ivan.html
I don't see any real way to help right now.
@49 asuffield, surely you are talking about a procedure other than a bone marrow transplant. At least you did admit, you don't even understand what this kid needs, because if you did, you'd understand it is last resort treatment, that is risky for the recipient - it literally brings you to death's door, before it brings you back again - because your immune system is literally killed off in order to receive a donation of another's stem cells, and engraftment will not succeed with the diseased cells intact in the body.
Success is different in different places, but there is a good rate of success.
The therapy isn't new. There are some experimental trials happening, and some newer treatments.
It's not a rare procedure. There are a few hundred performed every month in the US alone. The need for it is high as well.
Extremely complicated? Not really. Finding a match can prove extremely difficult, but donation is not difficult and takes a few hours. On the recipient side, the actual transplantation is not hard at all. The fluid is transfused into the patient. (The hard part comes afterward).
So, maybe you should look over your comment again, and wonder why you used the words "naturally" and "of course not."
Also, I happen to live in a country where this type of treatment is "free". No matter what your income level, you can get this treatment right away. "Free" means that taxpayers pay into our health care system, and for all those years, I, my brother, his wife, and the rest of our families have been paying into it to help other people, it is now there, when my brother needs this exact life-saving treatment.
So if you aren't sure about what you are talking about, take part in the discussion, but don't talk as if you are certain.
@50 tim: I'm sorry to hear about your son's condition. Please use my website to send me an email and I will post any upcoming drives in the site's calendar of bone marrow drives. While it costs 1 000 000 dollars to find a single donor in many cases (although some people have a rarer typing than 1 in 20 000), that million dollars goes directly to lab typing costs related to all of those people's samples. I just wanted to clarify that. All the best to your family.
If you put the link into google, you can see a cached version which gives you the link to paypal page.
The cached page is:
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:U7J7ql4GGLIJ:www.mysql.com/about/help-ivan.html+http://www.mysql.com/about/help-ivan.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
Hope this helps.
The mySQL PR team just got this blog post up which gives some more news on Ivan.
http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/10/01/ivan-nikitin-is-feeling-better-and-better/
father is good
If you're still looking for ways to help in a case like this, you can look into Gift of Life. They're trying to raise awareness (and funds) by becoming more active online. There are lots of ways to contribute -- adding yourself to the registry is as easy as a cheek swab, but they're also looking for people who can help publicize the issue online.