Bioethics.net

August 26, 2012 5:49 pm

Kidney for Ohio patient's transplant put in trash (USA Today)

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) – A nurse accidentally disposed of a kidney from a living donor this month at an Ohio hospital, and doctors tried unsuccessfully for at least two hours to resuscitate the organ in what medical experts describe as a rare accident, health officials said.  “Human error rendered the kidney unusable,” University of Toledo Medical Center spokesman Toby Klinger said Saturday, but he declined to give more details, citing the hospital’s investigation into what happened and its respect for the privacy of the patients involved.

August 15, 2012 1:35 pm

Autism Transplant Denial Sparks Debate (ABC News)

Dr. David Cronin, an associate professor of transplant surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin, told ABCNews.com he does not know the case, but organ transplant denial tends to be easier for people to accept because of an anatomic problem, such as calcified blood vessels that would prevent the successful implantation of a new kidney.

August 8, 2012 3:31 pm

Bioethicist: Families, stop thwarting organ donors (NBC News (blog))

Despite the great demand, very few Americans donate their organs when they die. But the reason for that may not be what you’d think — it’s your relatives.  That’s what David Shaw, honorary lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, thinks the real problem is. In an article published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, he writes that one of the biggest reasons more people don’t wind up donating is veto by their family.

August 8, 2012 3:26 pm

Young Man Denied Heart Transplant — His Autism May Be The Reason (Babble (blog))

Jeffrey Kahn, Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, concurred that each transplant facility creates its own policies. Dr. Kahn is also the Deputy Director for Policy and Administration at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.  “There are general rules and guidelines, but the individual transplant centers make a judgement in every individual case about whether or not the patient is an appropriate transplant recipient. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has guidelines that transplant centers must follow.” Dr. Kahn said that UNOS’ rules address things like regionality (organs generally go to nearby recipients) and prioritization of patients.

August 7, 2012 9:39 pm

The Checkup: Organ Donation Hampered By Obesity (Philadelphia Magazine (blog))

The New York Times ran a somber little piece yesterday about how organ-transplant centers are struggling as potential donors are being turned away because of their weight. Over half of these centers have rules requiring donors to have BMI scores under 35, and 10 percent are even stricter, saying they have to be under 30. The result is a fair number of potential donors being turned away from the programs—this, at a time when organ donation is seriously suffering.

August 6, 2012 7:46 pm

Organ Transplant Scandal Shocks Germany (Democratic Underground)

A surgeon identified as Dr. Aiman O. is suspected of fraudulently manipulating dozens of his patients’ test results, making them appear sicker than they were to get them liver transplants more quickly — and possibly putting them ahead of people who more desperately needed them. The case first emerged in late July at the University Medical Center Göttingen, in the northern German state of Lower Saxony, from where the senior physician has been suspended since November for allegedly tampering with some 23 transplant cases. A gastroenterologist suspected of involvement has also been suspended.

July 11, 2012 6:53 pm

Woman files lawsuit charging transplanted organ was cancerous (Chicago Sun-Times)

It was supposed to be a life-changing organ transplant.  But the pancreas given to patient Rashia Wimley at the University of Chicago Medical Center in the summer of 2008 was cancerous, a lawsuit filed Monday alleges.  Now Wimley, 39, says she’s been diagnosed with cancer as a result.  Her lawsuit alleges the doctor who performed the transplant, the University of Chicago and the Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network all acted carelessly and negligently by giving her the diseased organ.

July 3, 2012 4:55 pm

Confronting the Organ Transplant Gap -- A Surgeon's Perspective (The Huffington Post)

Patients and their families are often outraged that they must wait months or even years for life-saving transplants. I too live in a state of outrage. And here’s why: Every single day in one of the richest countries on Earth, an average of 18 people die because there aren’t enough hearts or lungs or livers to go around.  It’s a problem of simple math. More than 100,000 patients are on the waiting list for solid organ transplants, but in 2011 there were just 28,465 transplants completed.

June 18, 2012 7:06 pm

Body organs to be taken without consent in Wales (The Telegraph)

June 5, 2012 12:12 pm

Kidney exchange between strangers spans continents (Fox News)

Two strangers living across the world from each other in the U.S. and Greece made medical history when they became the first to donate their kidneys in an intercontinental paired exchange, according to a press conference Friday at the Greek Embassy in Washington, DC.