Documentary FILM TREATMENT

One in a Million is the inspiring story of one family’s courageous efforts to save their dying son, and in the process build and perpetuate a public bone marrow registry that would go on to save thousands. In an era without cell phones or social media, the donor drives coordinated to save Jay Feinberg, introduced people to a profound new realization - that stem cells and genetic advances could somehow unlock medical cures. 

Life-saving donor drives were a new and grassroots effort back then, featured on TV programs like Sally Jesse Raphael, where Jay was a featured guest in 1991, enlightening viewers about stem cells and the profound genetic promise they held. Responding to fliers, news articles and television shows, people unselfishly rolled up their sleeves to help save a life. Jay’s life.

For Feinberg, finding his elusive match meant organizing drives at synagogues and day schools throughout America - culminating with a global search including Europe and Belarus - where many of Jay’s relatives had been killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Jewish bloodlines decimated then, made the DNA detective work pressed by Jay and his family literally a one in a million proposition.

Thanks to an incredible sequence of improbable events, Jay’s life was eventually spared by a girl who unexpectedly found herself volunteering at a drive in Milwaukee. Afraid of needles yet inspired by what she learned at the drive, she overcame her fears and selflessly donated blood at the very last event held for Jay. To pay that fortuitous kindness forward, Jay has dedicated his life to helping those in similar circumstances - battling leukemia and other cancers and disorders. 

The Gift of Life Marrow Registry is the non-profit organization his family founded in 1991 to find matches and ensure equal opportunity among patients for the donors and treatments that save lives. Since its inception, Gift of Life has tested more than 850,000 people and found more than 18,000 genetic DNA matches. The goal of Jay’s advocacy, innovations and tireless efforts however, is to cure each and every person in need. Finding stem cell matches remains incredibly challenging and still requires vigilance to continuously swab and recruit thousands of healthy young donors. 

While individuals worldwide now support and benefit from Gift of Life’s inspiring mission, the hallmark of these efforts remains saving one individual life at a time. Like Jay, he or she is often a desperately ill child. Yet they are never alone or abandoned thanks to a courageous cadre of people, led to this very day by a man whose life was saved by one miraculous match from a total stranger.