Hello everyone,

Thank you for visiting 'The Red Lane'!! This concept for support has been around for four years in the form of a message board and this is now our fourth home, and hopefully where we will stay.

I am an advocate for Sickle Cell as I am a patient and my mission here is to provide Support, Source and Socialization for ANYONE who is in need. This is indeed a network site to emphasize these three agendas.

Upon joining, I hope you will find things easy to navigate with a bit of time. If you have any questions, just shoot me a message here on 'The Red Lane'. To help us increase awareness, please join and/or tell a friend or two or three or even many!

~Chi

P.S. Remember, that September is Sickle Cell Awareness Month!!!

Chi's Recommendations for Sickle Cell Support:

SCDAA: Sickle Cell Disease Association of America

Sickle Cell Information Center

The Tigaheye Foundation based in Washington, D.C.

Sickle Cell Timeline
1910 - Herrick provides the first formal description of sickle cell anemia when he reports that the blood smear of a dental student at the Chicago College of Dental Surgery contains "pear-shaped and elongated forms."

1927 - Hahn and Gillespie associate the sickling of red blood cells with low oxygen conditions.

1940 - Sherman reports that the sickling of red blood cells in the absence of oxygen is caused by a change in the hemoglobin molecule structure.

1948 - Watson suggests that the presence of fetal hemoglobin in the red blood cells of sickle cell newborns is the reason they do not show disease symptoms.

1949 - Noted physical chemist Linus Pauling and associates publish "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" in Science. This paper explains how protein electrophoresis was used to show that sickle cell hemoglobin differed in structure from normal hemoglobin. This was the first time that the cause of a disease was linked to a change in protein structure.

1956 - Vernon Ingram and J.A. Hunt sequence hemoglobin and discover that the change of a single amino acid in the protein sequence is the cause of sickle cell anemia.

1978 - Flavell prepares maps of the human beta and delta globin genes .

1995 - Upon the completion of the Multicenter Study of Hydroxyurea in Sickle Cell Anemia, Charache reports that the anticancer drug hydroxyurea is the first to reduce the frequent, painful complications that characterize sickle cell disease .

Timeline References
Brief History of Sickle Cell Disease. Joint Center for Sickle Cell and Thalassemic Disorders. (February 25, 2001) and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, OMIM (TM). Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. MIM No. 141900 (November 6, 2001) .


Other Sites:
African-American Literary Site: For Writers, By Writers
Black Refer: African American Sites