Organ Donation/ Transplant part 1

 I am not sure if we spent much time on this topic, maybe just in our small groups but either way I think that it is an interesting Bioethical debate. For my first installment I wanted to start with discussing the background of the donor crisis before I went into some more ethically questionable solutions to the donor crisis.

I want to break down my discussion of Organ transplants into three different sections. One blog post I would like to elaborate on black market organ sales and also organ sales on Facebook of all places and the bioethical implications of that. Another blog post I would like to discuss the future of 3-D organ printing. But, first I would like to introduce the discussion on organ transplants by initially discussing the donor crisis.

 

The donor crisis has become a serious problem. I found an article from 2007 already describing the donor crisis. The article stated that in 2006 the waitlist in the United States alone climbed to 95,000 patients on the waitlist. Of those patients 6,300 patients died while on the waitlist. That is over six thousand people in the United States missed out on the chance of at least receiving an organ transplant. Unfortunately it is ultimately to difficult to determine who will reject the organs. However for those 6,000 + individuals they never had the chance to see if they would except the organ. These numbers have risen every year. In 2014, 17,000 Kidney transplants were preformed which is great however 7,000 other individuals also waiting to receive a new kidney either died or became to ill to receive a transplant. So the question I wanted to ask is why is there a shortage? The answer is there is a lot of misconceptions. One of the major misconceptions is that somehow your medical care will be compromised if they know that you are an organ donor( “Well lets not try as hard to save John Doe who was in a bad car accident lets rush and get his lungs out and get them to Jane”). Dr. Lahiri says that they are not concerned about another patient when they are caring for you. To leave this with a discussion type question I ask are you an Organ Donor? Why or Why not? In case you were wondering, I am! J

 

 

If you would like to read more about Organ Transplant please feel free to look and explore my sources:

http://www.transplantation-proceedings.org/article/S0041-1345(07)01459-5/abstract?cc=y

http://www.health24.com/News/Organ-donation-crisis-in-US-20141113

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3RdrCUp03g