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Does it look like Cajun Mike’s in New Orleans is offering a bargain? Counteroffer: the NeatoShop will give you the same service at 10% off whatever price Cajun Mike’s quotes you.
-via That’s Nerdalicious! | Bar Website
The
problem with organ transplantation is, of course, there's not enough donors
to go around (Maybe people think that they'd need that kidney in the afterlife
or something).
But could this be the solution: a proposed Welsh law where organ donation is the default and people have to "opt out" if they don't want their organs be transplanted.
If it goes ahead, Wales would be the UK's first country with the system.
[Health Minister Lesley Griffiths] said the lack of organs and tissues caused unnecessary deaths and suffering.
The law, planned to be in place by 2015, would require people to opt out of donating their organs when they die, rather than opting in by signing the register.
Doctors' leaders hope it will "change cultural expectations" and prompt more family discussions about donation.
It's a "soft opt-out," meaning that families would not be forced to give up their dead relatives' organs: Link
Swedish surgeons at Karolinska University Hospital have successfully grown a donor free trachea and transplanted it into a patient, who is now recovering and doing well. The organ was created using the patients own stem cells, which were harvested from his bone marrow, and was grown in just two days. Using stem cells in this manner means the body is less likely to reject the organ, and lab grown organs could be grown as needed, in a very short amount of time. Read more about the future of medicine over at PopSci.
A couple of years ago, I mentioned that researchers were making headway toward transplanting a human uterus. Now doctors in Sweden have scheduled an experimental transplant between 56-year old Eva Ottosson and her 25-year old daughter Sara. The daughter has Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser (MRKH) syndrome and was consequently born without a uterus. If the procedure is successful, the uterus that she herself lived in for nine months will be implanted inside her own body. It will be a challenging operation:
Dr Mats Brannstrom, who is leading the medical team, said a womb transplant remained one of the most complex operations known to medical science.
He said: “Technically it is lot more difficult than transplanting a kidney, liver or heart. The difficulty with it is avoiding haemorrhage and making sure you have long enough blood vessels to connect the womb.
“You are also working deep down in the pelvis area and it is like working in a funnel. It is not like working with a kidney, which is really accessible.”
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user tofslie used under Creative Commons license
Ronald Lee Herrick was 79 years old when he died Monday in a Maine hospital from complications of heart surgery. He did not die from kidney failure, even though he only had one, and his identical twin brother suffered from renal failure in 1954. That was the year Herrick donated a healthy kidney to his brother in an operation that had never worked before.
The successful surgery kept Herrick’s brother alive for eight years and was the first successful organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Lead surgeon Dr Joseph Murray went on to win the Nobel prize.
The operation proved that transplants were possible and led to thousands of other successful kidney transplants, and later the transplant of other organs.
Doctors around the world had tried a few transplants before the breakthrough operation, without success, said Murray, who went on to perform another 18 transplants between identical twins.
Despite arguments at the time about the ethics of taking an organ from a healthy body, Herrick insisted on donating to save his brother’s life. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
(Image credit: Joel Page/AP)
When Eleni Dagiasi flew from Athens to Delhi for a kidney transplant, little did she know that her trip would involve a raid by the police. Turns out, the man she trusted to perform a kidney transplant surgery was known as India’s Kidney Kingpin.
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee of Discover write an intriguing story about the black market of organs and the fall of the Kidney Kingpin:
The mastermind, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charged, was Amit Kumar—a man who performed the surgeries with no more formal training than a degree in ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine. In a career spanning two decades, Kumar had established one of the world’s largest kidney trafficking rings, with a supply chain that extended deep into the Indian countryside. Some of his clients were from India. Many came from Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States.
At parties in India and abroad, Kumar introduced himself as one of India’s foremost kidney surgeons, said Rajiv Dwivedi, a CBI investigator based in Delhi. The claim wasn’t entirely illegitimate: Investigators estimate that Kumar has performed hundreds of successful transplants, a practice so lucrative that he was able to finance Bollywood movies and had to fend off extortion threats from the Mumbai mafia. Two weeks after the police crackdown in Gurgaon, Kumar was arrested at a wildlife resort in Nepal and brought back to India, where he now awaits trial.
Link – via 3quarksdaily
Most organs that are removed from bodies for transplants can last only four to eight hours before they become useless. But Harvard researcher Hemant Thatte and his team have developed what they call “Somah” — a chemical mix that can preserve organs. The above video shows a pig heart being revived using this process a day after it was removed from the pig.
The researchers harvested hearts from female pigs, stored them in one of the two solutions, then biopsied them at several points over the next four hours. They observed the function of the cardiomyocyte and endothelial cells–both of which must be preserved in order for the transplanted heart to survive over the long term. By measuring key proteins, they determined that the rate of cell death was significantly slower in the Somah-preserved hearts than it was in those stored with Celsior. Their experiments in pigs suggest that Somah keeps hearts and livers viable for at least 10 days. By contrast, solutions such as Celsior can only be counted on to preserve hearts and livers for about four and 12 hours, respectively.
Link via Popular Science
Need a new kidney? Forget waiting for a transplant – why not print one? That’s the idea behind the new 3D bio-printer by Organovo and Invetech:
Organovo’s 3D bio-printer works in a similar way to some rapid-prototyping machines used in industry to make parts and mechanically functioning models. These work like inkjet printers, but with a third dimension. Such printers deposit droplets of polymer which fuse together to form a structure. With each pass of the printing heads, the base on which the object is being made moves down a notch. In this way, little by little, the object takes shape. Voids in the structure and complex shapes are supported by printing a “scaffold” of water-soluble material. Once the object is complete, the scaffold is washed away.
Researchers have found that something similar can be done with biological materials. When small clusters of cells are placed next to each other they flow together, fuse and organise themselves. Various techniques are being explored to condition the cells to mature into functioning body parts—for example, “exercising” incipient muscles using small machines.
The Economist has the details: Link (Illustration: David Simonds)
Uterus transplants have been thus far unsuccessful because the transplanted uteri do not maintain a blood supply strong enough to keep a fetus alive. But now British medical researchers may have solved that problem. The Guardian reports:
They have worked out how to transplant a womb with a good blood supply which could mean it lasts long enough to carry a pregnancy to term.[...]
Their most recent study involved five donor rabbits and five recipients, which were operated on at the Royal Veterinary College in London.
Five rabbits received a womb using a “vascular patch technique” which connected major blood vessels, including the aorta.
Of the five, two rabbits lived to 10 months and examinations after death showed the transplants were a success.
Link via Discover | Image: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
According to some ethicists, The current medical definition of death is wrong … and this mistake is costing lives.
The controversy swirls around organ donation, in which doctors remove organs from brain dead patients:
Most organs donated from the deceased come from people who have been diagnosed as brain dead. Organs remain viable for only about an hour or two after a person’s last heartbeat. Brain dead patients are ideal candidates for organ donation, then, because they are kept on ventilators, which means their heart and lungs continue to work, ensuring that a steady flow of oxygen-rich blood keeps their organs healthy. Surgeons remove the donor’s organs, then shut off the ventilator. The patient’s heart eventually stops.
Yet a small but vocal minority in the medical community has always insisted that some brain dead patients may not be dead. For instance, one study documented some kind of brain activity in up to 20 percent of people declared brain dead, suggesting to some critics that doctors sometimes misdiagnose the condition. Although some neurologists contend the claim, University of Wisconsin medical ethicist Dr. Norman Fost points to research showing that many "brain dead" patients have a functioning hypothalamus, a structure at the base of the brain that governs certain bodily functions, such as blood pressure and appetite.
"We have been taking organs out of those patients by the thousands," says Fost, "and they are not brain dead."
Others point to the unsettling fact that the brain dead look alive — their hearts beat, lungs function (albeit with the aid of a respirator), and skin retains a pink hue. Brain dead women have even given birth.
"There is nobody in the world of philosophy and bioethics who thinks brain death is a coherent concept," says Truog.
Here’s an interesting article by Timothy Gower in The Boston Globe: Link – via Look At This
