Help Emergency Locators Find Matches for Medical Emergencies

EMLA is a volunteer organization that specializes in helping find family members when a medical emergency is at hand. Some examples are when a donor is needed or when an adoptee has a medical condition and the physicians need family medical information.
Thanks to short sighted legislation that seals adoption records from even adult adoptees, 5 million or more Americans do not have a family medical history available.
One of our own Search Angels has just found her birth sister and has learned that her birth brother died from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). In Googling the hereditary component of the disease I found the following write up

Q. Is ALS hereditary?
A. ALS is directly hereditary in only a small percentage of families. The majority of patients with adult-onset ALS (90%) have no family history of ALS, and present as an isolated case. This is called sporadic ALS (SALS), and although there is likely a genetic predisposition involved, SALS is not directly inherited in a family. Rare exceptions are when familial ALS (FALS) is masked due to an incomplete family history, such as if the patient is adopted or the patient's parents died at a young age. The remaining 10% of persons with ALS have a close second family member with ALS, which is referred to as familial ALS (FALS).
Currently the best tool to distinguish between SALS and FALS is the family history. A neurologist or genetic counselor will ask whether anyone else has ever been diagnosed with ALS, and if anyone else in the family had progressive walking or speech problems. If so, they will likely ask additional questions to see if the health problems were related to ALS or any number of other causes. They will also inquire about the ages that family members passed away to see if any close relatives passed away at a young age, meaning that a long health history is not available. It is very common to have limited information on one's family, but most families can still be reassured since the majority of instances of ALS are not hereditary. Older relatives are often good sources of family history information, and medical records can often be obtained with the help of a hospital's medical release form.

There are many diseases where the hereditary component is much more crucial to treating or diagnosing the disease.

Adoptees should not have to die because they were adopted. Help EMLA underwrite the costs of subscription databases by buying their cookbook. If like me, you do not cook, Joan, the moderator of several reunion adoption lists, suggests that you buy it to give to your lawmakers who have refused to pass adoption record reform laws. It contains not only recipes but heartwarming reunion stories.

EMLA posts this information in their flyer;
The Angel Food Volume II, our second cookbook of favorite recipes from the
EMLA! Search Angels, associates, & friends, is the perfect gift for your
family members & friends. The Angel Food II cookbook contains over 700
delicious recipes, cooking tips, successful reunion stories & more. 100% of
proceeds from the sale of this cookbook go to funding AFS/EMLA
http://adoption- free-search. org/ so we
can continue to help adoptees and birth parents with medical issues.


The cookbook can be purchased by emailing
npeuraharju@yahoo.com
The cost of the cookbook is $10.00 plus $5.00 postage in the US.

All money goes directly towards covering the cost of databases and other computing services. Our Search Angels on many boards use these services to help you. Please help us continue to afford it. All of the search angels donate money as well as their time. Please contribute so we can provide these and more outstanding services for you