We've been reading and hearing a lot of inspirational stories lately, and I have to say it's a wonderful thing to be reminded of the amount of generosity and compassion that people have to offer.

Then there are the mind-boggling tales that show the exact opposite.

From the Times Herald-Record:

The clock on the wall was ticking and Frank Musolino was waiting — waiting for the bone-marrow transplant that could save his life.

He was waiting for the red tape to clear so that his brother, serving a life sentence in prison for murder, would be allowed to leave his cell to give him that transplant. Without it, Musolino, 60, would have only months to live.

As reported in the Sunday Record last month, Musolino waited more than a month last summer for the State Correctional Institution in Albion, Pa., to OK the transplant.

It gets worse from there, but not so bad as this one from Sabah in Turkey. The English translation is just a little shaky, but the upshot is that the chairman of a bone marrow bank was accused of referring patients to his own lab and overcharging them. He also delayed test results; the result is twenty patient deaths in six months.

This is one reason why it's good to get the word out about how the international bone marrow registry system works; with more accurate information and fewer myths out there, people in real will be less susceptible to this kind of fraudulent—and deadly—behaviour.