Would you take a second-rate kidney?

[Farmduck]

The critical shortage of organ donations in Australia has led doctors at a New South Wales hospital to use the recycled and diseased kidneys of cancer patients.

 

The John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle have been quietly transplanting the kidneys into dialysis patients since 2008 with great success.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-11/nsw-hospital-uses-recycled-and-diseased-kidneys/6768224

 

 

Sounds fine to me. Many people would rank so low on the transplant priority list that they will never get the good stuff. I'd go one step further with organ transplants and take animal organs. If having a pig or sheep liver means the difference between living and dying then pork me up, stat!!!!

[Bob8]

 

The critical shortage of organ donations in Australia has led doctors at a New South Wales hospital to use the recycled and diseased kidneys of cancer patients.

 

The John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle have been quietly transplanting the kidneys into dialysis patients since 2008 with great success.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-11/nsw-hospital-uses-recycled-and-diseased-kidneys/6768224

 

 

Sounds fine to me. Many people would rank so low on the transplant priority list that they will never get the good stuff. I'd go one step further with organ transplants and take animal organs. If having a pig or sheep liver means the difference between living and dying then pork me up, stat!!!!

 

This is part of a bigger issue that kills many people.  Someone had to give the go-ahead for this and that person is a hero who deserves to be carrried shoulder high through the streets.  There are several nations where British people cannot give blood as they might, hypothetically, have contracted BSE.  The latest science on this can be summed up as below:

Chance of someone dying from donated blood shortage: reasonably high

Chance of someone dying from BSE in donated blood: ###### all

But, as there is not proper risk assessment (by which I really mean people not being complete dicks), people die for want of donated blood.  This is because people would rather be inert than take a career risk that would save lives.

[Farmduck]

I'd extend that to HIV-positive donors. If a HIV+ person, in otherwise good health, dies in a car accident, and I'm a 70-year-old smoker with lung cancer and no hope of ever getting a spare, I'd take the lungs. With the anti-virals these days people can stay HIV+ for 20+ years without getting sick. Most people on the low-priority transplant list will not get 20 years any other way.

[Bedford Roughyed]

This is part of a bigger issue that kills many people.  Someone had to give the go-ahead for this and that person is a hero who deserves to be carrried shoulder high through the streets.  There are several nations where British people cannot give blood as they might, hypothetically, have contracted BSE.  The latest science on this can be summed up as below:

Chance of someone dying from donated blood shortage: reasonably high

Chance of someone dying from BSE in donated blood: ###### all

But, as there is not proper risk assessment (by which I really mean people not being complete dicks), people die for want of donated blood.  This is because people would rather be inert than take a career risk that would save lives.

 

See the headlines earlier this week regarding Alzheimer's.

[Wolford6]

See the headlines earlier this week regarding Alzheimer's.

 

I think I saw them, but I can't quite remember.

[Farmduck]

See the headlines earlier this week regarding Alzheimer's.

http://www.nature.com/news/autopsies-reveal-signs-of-alzheimer-s-in-growth-hormone-patients-1.18331

 

Even so we're talking about a 1:10,000 chance of getting a degenerative disease versus a 1 in 5 chance of dying within 5 years.

 

 

Here's a more scientific calculation: 

 

Studies have come to varying conclusions as to just how many people harbour the abnormal prion protein (PrP) that causes vCJD. Surveys of tens of thousands of appendices and tonsils, discarded after surgery, have shown PrP prevalence rates ranging from 1 in 4,000² to 1 in 10,000³, or even zero⁴.

 

http://www.nature.com/news/one-in-2-000-uk-people-might-carry-vcjd-proteins-1.13962

[Tiny Tim]

On this theme if you are not set up to donate your organs when you die please sign up to do so today. You could save many lives and let's be honest you won't be needing them. For a tiny effort you can make a huge difference.

 

https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-to-donate/

 

Also if you have the time please donate blood, it doesn't hurt (well only a small #####  ) and you usually get a cup of tea and free biscuits afterwards.

 

http://www.blood.co.uk/

[Saintslass]

In the days when I was a smoker (namely up to just over two years ago) I was advised not to bother giving blood or donating my organs because of the risk of cancer as a result of my smoking.  This was not about me having cancer already or showing any pre cancerous cells in anything or having any negative symptoms of smoking bar a grizzly chest first thing in the morning (long since gone) - ie, there was nothing to suggest I already had developed cancer.  This advice was based on the possibility that my organs (all of them, not just lungs) and blood might develop cancer at some point in the future.  So I haven't given blood in years and I ripped up the card which agreed to my organs being donated.  I'm not sure barring people who actually don't have cancer from giving blood or donating organs on the basis that they may develop it because of a risky life choice is the best approach to take given that the receipients themselves may have risky life choices and/or may develop cancer anyway.  We don't know who is going to develop cancer regardless of life choices so why deprive a sick receipient of, say, a healthy liver just in case it may become cancerous at some point in the future (even though smoking isn't recorded as affecting livers at all)?

[Shadow]

That depends on who gave you that advice and in what capacity they were giving it, and whether that advice represents current policy if it ever did.