When Penny Wark's brother died last year, her family did not hesitate to donate his organs. Despite the trauma, she thinks it was the right decision - but says grieving relatives must be treated with more care.
Families would have no legal right to stop dead relatives' organs being used for transplant if the person has not opted out in advance, under a proposed Welsh law. However, Health Minister Lesley Griffiths said she could not see a situation where doctors took organs without the permission of families.
Patients could be kept alive solely so they can become organ donors, hearts could be retrieved from newborn babies for the first time, and body parts could be taken from high-risk donors as part of an urgent medical and ethical revolution to ease Britain's chronic shortage of organs, doctors' leaders say.
Proposals for increasing organ donation are often rejected as incompatible with altruistic motivation on the part of donors. This paper questions, on conceptual grounds, whether most organ donors really are altruistic. If we distinguish between altruism and solidarity – a more restricted form of other-concern, limited to members of a particular group – then most organ donors exhibit solidarity, rather than altruism. If organ donation really must be altruistic, then we have reasons to worry about the motives of existing donors. However, I argue that altruism is not necessary, because organ donation supplies important goods, whatever the motivation, and we can reject certain dubious motivations, such as financial profit, without insisting on altruism. Once solidaristic donation is accepted, certain reforms for increasing donation rates seem permissible. This paper considers two proposals. Firstly, it has been suggested that registered donors should receive priority for transplants. Whil
Dr Joseph Murray, who won the Nobel prize for his pioneering work in human organ transplants, has died aged 93. It was in December 1954 that Dr Murray successfully transplanted a kidney between identical twins for the first time. His work paved the way for tens of thousands of other successful human organ transplants.
A former pub landlord from West Yorkshire has become the first person in the UK to have a hand transplant. Mark Cahill, who is 51, had been unable to use his right hand after it was affected by gout. Doctors say he is making good progress after an eight-hour operation at Leeds General Infirmary. It is still very early to assess how much control of the hand will be gained - so far he can wiggle his fingers, but has no sense of touch. As well as being a first for the UK, it was also the first time a recipient's hand has been amputated during an operation to attach a donor hand.
The NHS should consider giving surgery priority to patients already on the organ donor register to address the problem of “free riders”, amid a “huge failure” in boosting organ donation rates among ethnic minority groups, an expert in the field has said.
Where you live can affect your chances of getting a liver transplant, and your risk of dying while waiting. The nation's transplant network says it's time to make the system fairer â and it may take a cue from how politicians redraw voting maps. "Gerrymandering for the public good" is how Johns Hopkins University transplant surgeon Dr. Dorry Segev describes a proposal to change the map that governs how donated livers are distributed around the country.
J. Klein, B. Logan, M. Harhoff, и P. Andersen. Statistics in medicine, 26 (24):
4505-19(октября 2007)4622<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>CI: Copyright (c) 2007; GR: R01 CA54706-10/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States; JID: 8215016; ppublish;<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Anàlisi de supervivència.