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"Transplant tourism" on rise due to donor shortages By Laura MacInnis GENEVA - "Transplant tourism" is on the rise because organ donations are not keeping up with growing demand, especially for kidneys, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. The United Nations agency said it was concerned about a rise in cases where people in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines were persuaded to sell their body parts to outsiders, mostly through a broker. The practice has increased over the past decade, said Luc Noel of the WHO's health technology and pharmaceuticals unit. "We believe 5 to...

Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% human 25.03.07   Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.  Chimera: sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells  He...

AN ARTIFICIAL liver has been grown for the first time from stem cells, it emerged last night.The breakthrough by British scientists is considered the vital first step towards creating a fully artificial liver that could be used to tackle ever-growing waiting lists for transplants within as little as ten years.

TORONTO, October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A doctor and assistant professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary is warning that a change in the rules defining death for purposes of organ donations could place patients in danger and ICU doctors in a conflict of interest. Dr. Christopher Doig, director of the intensive care unit at Calgary's Foothills Medical Centre, wrote in an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that allowing organs to be removed from patients after cardiac arrest could place vulnerable patients at risk. Currently Canada relies upon the “brain death” criterion to...

A quiet revolution in the world of lung transplants is saving the lives of people who, just two years ago, would have died on the waiting list. In the past 16 months, waits have shortened, lists have shrunk, and the number of lung transplants has gone up. Further improvements are expected this year. The changes have all but erased the need for transplants from live donors — desperate, last-ditch operations requiring two donors per patient, usually relatives and friends who risk major surgery in hopes of rescuing a loved one whose time is running out. “It’s almost as if it’s...

Close window Published online: 21 July 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060717-18 You're only as old as your genesGenetic fingerprint could pinpoint fittest organ donors.Helen Pearson Close up: ageing can be seen in our cells, chromosomes and genes.Credit: DR GOPAL MURTI / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY A fingerprint of gene activity could reveal the true 'youthfulness' of our kidneys, hearts and muscle, regardless of our biological age. The technique might one day be used to find healthy organs for transplants or to warn us of impending disease. It's hard to tell, particularly on a cellular level, whether a young and healthy body conceals...

MARCH was National Kidney Month. I did my part: I got a new one. My good fortune, alas, does not befall nearly enough people, and the federal government deserves much of the blame. Today 70,000 Americans are waiting for kidneys, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which maintains the national waiting list. Last year, roughly 16,000 people received one (about 40 percent are from living donors, the others from cadavers). More are waiting for livers, hearts and lungs, which mostly come from deceased donors, bringing the total to about 92,000. In big cities, where the ratio of...

Ten years ago, Heather Randall wagered her kidney in a friendly game of pinochle with best friend Kim Huegel, who suffers from a rare kidney disease. It was a joke and Ms. Randall didn’t think too much about it. Ms. Huegel’s health improved and she went on to have a daughter. Last year, Ms. Huegel took a turn for the worse and began dialysis in December. Two weeks ago, Ms. Randall made good on her bet when the two women underwent transplant surgery at Geisinger Medical Center, Danville. “I always said, ‘I’m not sharing my parts with anyone,’” said Ms....

The television and motion picture industries are scaring people away from donating organs, says a Purdue University health communication expert. "Fictitious story lines that focus on a black market for organs or doctors who murder patients for their organs are taking their toll," says Susan Morgan, an associate professor of communication who is tracking how organ donation is portrayed on television. To combat such myths, Morgan is taking a more personal approach to informing people about organ donation through the New Jersey Workplace Partnership for Life, which provides tailored health campaigns in workplace settings. Morgan is working with 45 New...

Josh Hightower needed a kidney. But he was hardly on his deathbed. In the months before his transplant, the 17-year-old roared across his family's East Texas ranch in his four-wheeler and tossed fluid-filled dialysis bags from his truck like water balloons. On the night his mother got the unexpected call – there was a kidney for him headed to Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas – Josh was out with his longtime girlfriend, having a high-school-sized argument. But the organ meant to liberate Josh from a life of catheters and blood-cleaning machines instead caused his death: It infected him with...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday announced that he is proposing legislation that would regulate tissue transplants and donations, Long Island Newsday reports. The majority of tissue now comes from hospitals, though it is not illegal for funeral homes to sell tissue (Ochs, Long Island Newsday, 1/24). However, Schumer's legislation would make it illegal for tissue banks to purchase tissue, bone and muscle from funeral homes or morgues, with exceptions for types of tissue in short supply. Schumer also would tighten FDA oversight by requiring the agency to make unannounced visits to tissue banks at least once a year (Livingston,...

One week after a little girl was hit by a mini-van in Lackawanna County, family members are making her funeral arrangements. They want everyone to know that her final gift may help save the lives of other children. Mia Diaz, 8, of Olyphant died over the weekend. The third grader at Mid Valley Elementary School loved to cheer for the Olyphant Lions, an area junior football team. She died nearly a week after being hit by a mini-van along East Scott Street in Olyphant, not far from where she lived. She'd been walking to the corner bus stop. Mia's mother,...

(AP) Jennifer Duran knows a bit about how challenging life will be for the French woman who got a face transplant. After a kidney transplant at age 13, Duran took "20-something pills a day" to keep her body from rejecting her new organ. The drugs' side effects included facial hair — "not a good thing when you're a 13-year-old girl" — and memory problems that linger to this day. The worst was the warts on one leg and foot, so painful that as a college student she often couldn't walk. But today Duran, 26, is the picture of hope to...

Donor Network Right to Refuse Organs from Homosexual, Says Christian Doc By Mary Rettig December 7, 2005 (AgapePress) - Friends and family of a Tucson man are crying discrimination after the homosexual man's organs were rejected by the Donor Network of Arizona. However, a Kansas surgeon who works in organ transplantation says the decision was a good one. Albert Soto, 51, intended to donate his eyes and other tissues after death, but a spokesman from the Network says the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has established guidelines allowing centers to reject donations from men who have had sex with...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) — A killer nurse who murdered at least 29 patients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey by injecting them with lethal doses of drugs wants to donate his kidney to save an ailing person's life. Charles Cullen has asked prosecutors to allow him to travel to New York so doctors can perform the surgery, his attorney said Tuesday. Somerset County Deputy Public Defender Johnnie Mask Jr. said prosecutors have agreed to let Cullen undergo the operation in New Jersey, but not travel to New York for it. "I don't know what the objections are" to doing the...

Surgeons in France have for the first time performed a partial face transplant, a surgeon who led one of the two teams that performed the operation said yesterday. The recipient of the transplant was a 38-year-old woman who had been severely disfigured in an attack by a dog, said the surgeon, Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard of Lyon. The operation was carried out in Amiens on Sunday. In a brief telephone interview, Dr. Dubernard said the two surgical teams had grafted a nose, lips and chin from a donor who had been declared brain dead onto the woman's face. Hospital officials said...

The family of Ahmed el-Hatib, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy mistakenly killed by soldiers who saw him carrying a toy they thought was a weapon, will receive a special NIS 10,000 grant from the ADI organization after donating his organs for transplant. The Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel in Petah Tikva said it was performing four transplants of organs taken from the Palestinian boy. The heart was transplanted to a 12-year-old girl from the Druze village of Peki'in; the liver was going to a 7-month-old Jewish boy from Acre; and a kidney each was being transplanted to a four-year-old girl...

Researchers at The University of Manchester funded by the Fungal Research Trust have discovered millions of fungal spores right under our noses - in our pillows. Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults. The researchers dissected both feather and synthetic samples and identified several thousand spores of fungus per gram of used pillow - more than a million spores per pillow. Fungal contamination of bedding...

Sorry for the vanity; I tried to send a FReepmail to everyone on my ping lists, but it wouldn't accept multiple names. Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that after not posting for several weeks, I'm now back to posting. It's been an "interesting" end of the summer. In August, I was placed on the list for a kidney transplant (not at all unexpected; I've know for several years that I have Polycystic Kidney Disease), and had surgery at the end of August to place an access for dialysis (I'm not on dialysis yet; my kidney function is...

CLEVELAND: Five US men and seven women will secretly visit a medical clinic in Ohio in coming weeks to vie for the chance to have a radical operation that has never been tried anywhere in the world. They will smile, raise their eyebrows, close their eyes and open their mouths. The Cleveland Clinic's Maria Siemionow will study their cheekbones, lips and noses. She will ask what they hope to gain, and what they most fear. Then she will ask: "Are you afraid you will look like another person?" Because whoever she chooses will endure the ultimate identity crisis. Dr Siemionow...

It's a miracle: mice regrow hearts 29aug05 SCIENTISTS have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail. And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate, the US-based researchers say. Their discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up...

<p>GILBERT, Ariz. (AP) -- A 9-year-old cancer patient is being sent back home to Arizona without the new liver she needs to survive.</p> <p>Doctors at California Children's Hospital in San Diego might still perform the transplant surgery within the next three months, but they're waiting for more test results and they want to give Haley Knutsen more time to recover from her third bone marrow transplant which took place about three months ago.</p>

Gilbert News Concert to benefit girl needing liver By Daryl James, Tribune August 13, 2005 Professional entertainers from across the Valley will take the stage Monday in a benefit concert for Gilbert cancer survivor Haley Knutsen, 9, who now waits in San Diego for a lifesaving liver transplant. Related Links Chandler Gilbert Chandler music teacher Mary-Jo Okawa said lining up performers for the show has been easy. "You would not believe the number of e-mails I’m getting," said Okawa, who taught school with Haley’s mom and had Haley as a student for three years. "It’s so inspirational to be part...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Bridgett Luther Thompson to head the state Department of Conservation Friday. Thompson, 50, was previously a regional development director for Hands on Bay Area, which matches its network of volunteers to local charities. Prior to that, she was national development director for Republicans for Environmental Protection. "Bridgett shares my dedication to protecting our environment and ensuring our natural resources are wisely conserved," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. Thompson, a member of both the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, has also served as program director for the Trust for Public Land in Charlotte,...

A five year old Kansas City girl may be on the way to regaining her sight thanks to a rare operation at a local hospital. Doctors took a salivary gland from a young patient's mouth and put it into her eye in the hopes of replacing her tears, and improving her chances of getting a cornea transplant. Sierra Guillen lost the ability to make tears after a severe allergic reaction to a seizure medication about two and a half years ago. Her eyes are now so dry, she's extremely sensitive to light, always rubbing them. And her corneas are so...

In an emergency room at a Finnish hospital, a man sprawled unconscious on an operating table as surgeons labored to reattach the hand he had lost hours earlier while chopping wood. Medical miracles take many forms, but few are as vivid and immediate as this: As the tiny blood vessels were sutured back together, the patient's hand flushed from porcelain to pink. The delicate tendons of the palm revived, and the skin's granite glaze began to soften. The man's fortunes had taken a remarkable turn. So, too, had those of Dr. Maria Siemionow, a surgical resident assisting in the operation....

NEW YORK, July 22-The glitterati of the city's competitive public relations community banded together Thursday for a noon rally to support one of their own--Shari Kurzrok, 31, who lies dying of fulminant liver failure in NYU Medical Center. Until early this month, Kurzrok had life by the leash. Her professional life was great--she was a vice president at Oglivy Public Relations. And, personally, she planned to be married on Oct. 15. Now, suddenly, with no warning, her liver failed. Only a new liver will save her life, and she needs it within days. Today is her fifth day as a...

A desperately ill doctor bets on a miracle Sunday, September 26, 2004 First of four partsOne patient was on the table and another was in the next exam room when the phone rang for Dr. Robert Manzi, a Ridgefield internist. He took it in the hallway and said, "Hi, Joe, what's up?"It was his kidney specialist, a colleague at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, calling with results from Manzi's biopsy. Manzi hoped to find out why he'd been losing weight, feeling tired, and seeing suds in his urine."Bob,'' the specialist said, "you have primary systemic amyloidosis.''Manzi had read a brief...

By Steve Chapman Socialist and communist governments have nationalized all sorts of things: oil and gas fields, phone companies, steel mills, coal mines, airlines and farms. Now the American Medical Association, which generally does not favor collective ownership of the means of production, has proposed to go even further. It suggests nationalizing corpses. The United States has a severe shortage of kidneys, livers, lungs and other human organs needed by patients awaiting transplants. The AMA thinks we might close the gap between supply and demand by confiscating body parts from people who no longer need them. Today, you have to...

Eight towns would love to land the new Sierra Nevada Conservancy headquarters, projected to eventually have 70 employees and a $10 million budget. But only two showed up at the historic first meeting of the conservancy board Thursday in Sacramento, and both were from Nevada County. Nevada City used a laid-back approach in its pitch, but Truckee came on like a runaway snowboarder. Auburn, Colfax, Placerville, Amador City, Ione and Jackson were no-shows. “Give us your serious consideration,” said Truckee Mayor Craig Threshie in a lengthy speech that trumpeted the town’s location, history and commitment to the range. “We have...

Tejon Ranch and its conservation partner, The Trust for Public Land, have figured out which 100,000 acres of the ranch's 270,000 acres will be carved out into a preserve. If the deal goes through, some of Tejon's majestic peaks and canyons in the Tehachapi Mountains could forever be saved from development. A step is being taken in that direction today, though an actual deal is much further away. The majority of the land is in the southeastern portion of the Tehachapis. There's also a swath next to Interstate 5 intended to connect the future preserve with the Wind Wolves Preserve...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Indiana officials recommended on Friday that a man facing execution next week should not get clemency, a decision that could end his attempt to donate part of his liver to his sister. Gregory Johnson, 40, had asked for clemency for legal reasons, or a delay in his May 25 execution date so the transplant could take place. A spokeswoman for the Indiana Parole Board said the panel's four members voted unanimously to recommend that Johnson be denied clemency. There was no separate vote on a stay, she said. The final decision on clemency or a stay will...

Three critically ill patients - including two from the Bay State - died from what they thought were lifesaving transplants because the organs they received were infected by a virus transmitted by the donor's pet hamster, health officials said. ``This is an unfortunate series of events,'' said Dr. Jay Fishman of Massachusetts General Hospital, who treated one of the organ recipients who died. ``It's terrible for the patients and their families. These kinds of things happen, but it is very rare.'' Four people - two from Massachusetts and two from Rhode Island - underwent transplant surgery on April 10 and...

Organ Would Be Unusable If He Dies First, Lawyers Say INDIANAPOLIS -- A man condemned to die by chemical injection later this month is seeking a reprieve at least long enough to donate his liver to his dying sister. Gregory Scott Johnson is scheduled to die May 25 for the 1985 murder of Ruby Hutslar, 82, of Anderson. Authorities say he beat and stomped on Hutslar, then set a fire to try to hide his crime. Defense attorneys want Gov. Mitch Daniels to allow time for medical tests to determine whether Johnson can donate his liver to his sister, Deborah...