Transplant Recipients See National Sports Games as Inspiration For Living
Jul 28, 2010 (San Jose Mercury News) Think of it as the LiveStrong Games, but everyone is competing with someone else's organs.

Many Outraged as Accused Murderer Gets Liver Transplant
Jul 27, 2010 (MSNBC) Should doctors have given organ to someone else on long waiting list?

Patients find kidney donors on facebook
Jul 23, 2010 (Fox News) People on organ transplant lists are utilizing social media to find organ donors.

Organ Donation: An Opt-Out Policy?
Jul 02, 2010 (USA Today) An assemblyman's personal experience drives reform for organ donation policy.

Proposed tax credit for organ donation raises ethical concerns
Jun 09, 2010 (The Canadian Medical Association Journal) In order to ensure that bereaved families honor donor’s wishes, government should issue tax credits for organ donations, says ethicist and visiting fellow at the Université de Montréal in Québec.

Jury Weighs Whether Transplant Hastened Man's Death
May 28, 2010 (The Wall Street Journal) A jury in New York Supreme Court in Queens began deliberating whether a kidney transplant that Vincent Liew received from a woman with uterine cancer hastened his death.

Shortage of Transplant Organs Spurs Proposals But No Solution
May 27, 2010 (U.S. News & World Report) Organ transplants save thousands of lives every year, but many more people languish on waiting lists because of a serious shortage of organs. While proposals to increase the supply have gained some followers, opinions differ on whether they will work -- or even if they should be tried at all.

Experience: I Gave My Kidney to a Stranger
May 16, 2010 (The Guardian) What to do when that "surplus organ" would seem put to better use in someone you don't know.

Should laws push for organ donation?
May 06, 2010 (The New York Times) Ethicists discuss the pros and cons of the presumed organ donation consent bill while analyzing other factors that need to be considered to make this bill successful.

NY lawmakers wants presumed organ donation consent
May 06, 2010 (Daily News Los Angeles) Over 100,000 people are on transplant lists with only 28,465 organ transplants performed in 2009. Could more lives could be saved if everyone were presumed organ donors?

Public to have say on on organ donation incentives
Apr 21, 2010 (BBC News) Cash incentives and the payment of funeral expenses are two ideas being put forward to encourage people to donate human organs and tissue.

UK reveals 800,000 organ donor list errors
Apr 13, 2010 (MSNBC) LONDON - Britain's transplant authority said Saturday that it was investigating several hundred thousand errors in its organ donor list stretching back about a decade.

Woman meets her 11 blood donors
Apr 05, 2010 (MSNBC) As determined single mom Alta Ray battled a rare strain of leukemia, she made sure to thank more than just her lucky stars for her progress. She offered silent gratitude to her angels — the 17 blood donors who went through an arduous process to help her live through 93 blood transfusions.

New Finding for Organ Donors
Mar 28, 2010 (Wall Street Journal) A major study of kidney donations provides the strongest evidence yet that organ donors live just as long as people who go through life with two kidneys.

The ethics of paying kidney donors
Mar 17, 2010 (WHYY News) A new study seems to knock down some of the ethical objections to paying people to donate an organ. The study authors are with the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia VA Medical Center.

Project to get transplant organs from ER patients raises ethics questions
Mar 15, 2010 (Washington Post) In the hope of expanding a controversial form of organ donation into emergency rooms around the United States, a federally funded project has begun trying to obtain kidneys, livers and possibly other body parts from car-accident victims, heart-attack fatalities and other urgent-care patients.

Donate your organs, move up the queue
Mar 15, 2010 (Today) Israel is launching a potentially trailblazing experiment in organ donation: Sign a donor card, and you and your family moves up in line for a transplant if one is needed. The new law is the first of its kind in the world, and international medical authorities are eager to see if it boosts organ supply. But it has also raised resistance from within Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority.

Lawsuit Argues Lives Would Be Saved If Bone Marrow Donors Were Paid
Feb 24, 2010 (USA Today) Should people be paid to donate bone marrow? About 20,000 bone marrow transplants are performed annually in the USA to treat blood disorders such as leukemia and anemia, and in up to 30% of cases, the donor is a relative, usually a sibling.

Blacklisted Hospital in Trouble Again Over Kidney Scam
Feb 02, 2010 (The Times of India) lthough several rackets have been busted in Tamil Nadu and many reports, including in some leading medical journals like The Lancet, have indicated that there have been sale of organs, no doctor or hospital has ever been proved guilty. The licences of at least 15 hospitals have been withdrawn and suspension notices issued by the directorate of medical services, particularly after the state health department unearthed a kidney trade where the survivors of the December 2004 tsunami were donors. The Kovai Medical Centre and Research Institute, which has been issued suspension this time, was among them.

26 Operations, 13 Kidneys in Largest Donor Chain
Dec 15, 2009 (MSNBC.com) Twenty-six operations put healthy kidneys into 13 desperately ill people: Doctors in the nation's capital just performed a record-setting kidney swap, part of a pioneering effort to expand transplants to patients who too often never qualify.

Patients Sue for Right to Buy Life-Saving Bone Marrow
Nov 09, 2009 (Fox News) Among the thousands of Americans with leukemia and other serious health conditions who are on waiting lists for bone marrow donations, there are some who are willing — and can afford — to pay for the marrow that could save their lives.

Womb Transplant 'Years Away'
Oct 22, 2009 (NHS Choices) Widespread coverage has been given to reports that the first human womb transplant could take place within two years. Most newspapers said that research presented at an American fertility conference gives hope to thousands of women who are unable to give birth because they have a damaged uterus, had it removed through disease or because they were born without one.

Study Seeks Ban on Organ Trafficking
Oct 14, 2009 (Associated Press) A new international convention is needed to prevent trafficking in kidneys and other organs and potentially life-saving tissues and cells, according to a joint study by the United Nations and the Council of Europe released Tuesday.

It's against the law to buy or sell human organs for transplant
Oct 04, 2009 (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) It's against the law in most countries, including the United States, to buy or sell human organs for transplant. But that doesn't mean organ sales don't happen, as evidenced by the recent story of organ-brokering uncovered as part of a larger corruption scandal in New York and New Jersey.

Opting in vs. Opting Out
Sep 27, 2009 (New York Times) WHEN Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, appeared in public recently for the first time in months, he revealed that he had received a liver transplant from the victim of a car crash. “I wouldn’t be here without such generosity,” Mr. Jobs said, adding that he hoped that many people would become organ donors.

Organ transplants: Older organs used, with patients' consent
Sep 18, 2009 (Chicago Tribune) At 84 years old, Juan Guano would seem an unlikely candidate for a kidney transplant. But consider this: The kidney he received was 69.

Transplant first as five lives saved from two donors in 24 hours
Aug 17, 2009 (Telegraph) Surgeons in Birmingham have carried out five life-saving transplant operations from two donors in under 24 hours in a European first.

China overhauls illegal organ transplants
Aug 14, 2009 (Xinhua) China launched an overhaul targeting illegal organ transplants, after reports surfaced that some hospitals were illegally doing organ surgeries for foreigners.

World's longest living heart transplant recipient dies of cancer
Aug 14, 2009 (Examiner) Tony Huesman, the world's longest living heart transplant recipient died Sunday at age 51, as a result of complications related to cancer. Diagnosed with cardiomyopathy at the age of 16, Huesman received his transplant in 1978 at Stanford University Hospital, where he was one of the first people in the program pioneered by Dr. Norman Shumway. The transplant took place just 11 years following the world's first heart transplant performed in South Africa.

Why Should They Die?
Aug 07, 2009 (Forbes) One of those arrested in July's extraordinary New Jersey roundup of mayors, legislators and others for alleged money laundering and corruption was a Brooklyn man accused of trying to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant operation. The accused allegedly boasted that he had brokered many such sales. This brought on the usual outcries over the need to crack down--including leveling stiffer penalties--on the selling of human body parts and organs. There is a much better--and infinitely more humane--way to deal with this problem

Blood procedure allows kidney transplants, can help minorities
Aug 06, 2009 (CNN) Surgeons at two Washington hospitals have performed seven kidney transplants involving 14 recipients and donors who did not match, using a process that virtually eliminates the chances of organ rejection.The process, called plasmapheresis, can make it easier for underserved African-American patients to receive organs for transplant.

Organ transplant policy criticism
Aug 03, 2009 (BBC) A policy which sees the UK share organ donations with the EU has been criticised by some people on the transplant waiting list. In the past 10 years the UK has sent more than 300 organs to other EU states, but received only 120 in return. Stewart Rankin, from Rogerstone, near Newport, believes that the disparity has added 50% to his three-year wait for a new heart.

Private transplants to be banned
Jul 31, 2009 (BBC) The UK government says it will ban all private transplants of organs from dead donors in the UK. The move comes after media reports of overseas patients paying to get onto the waiting list for organs donated by British people.

Women Sell Their Eggs, So Why Not a Kidney?
Jul 30, 2009 (US News and World Report) I was as upset as anyone by the allegations of organ selling that are associated with a New Jersey corruption scandal resulting in more than 40 arrests last week. But a Wall Street Journal column this week calling for more incentives for folks to donate organs makes the issue seem more complex than at first blush. "More than 80,000 Americans now wait for a kidney . . . thirteen of them die daily; the rest languish for years on dialysis," writes Sally Satel. She says she would have gladly considered paying an organ broker to get a kidney several years back when she needed one and there was no donor. That is, if it hadn't been illegal.

Transplant for heart refusal girl
Jul 30, 2009 (BBC) Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has confirmed that 14-year-old Hannah Jones, from Marden, near Hereford, is one of its patients. Her mother, Kirsty, said the operation had been completed and doctors believed it had been successful. Hannah, whose heart has been weakened by medication for leukaemia, initially refused a transplant, saying she wanted to die with dignity.

Kidney Transplant
Jul 28, 2009 (New York Times) Surgeons tried at least nine times to transplant a human kidney before succeeding. An article written in the spring of 1954 and published in the February 1955 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation reported that five of the operations failed immediately, and the rest within 180 days.

About That New Jersey Organ Scandal
Jul 27, 2009 (Wall Street Journal) Even by New Jersey standards, Thursday’s roundup of three mayors, five rabbis and 36 others on charges of money laundering and public corruption was big. But what put this FBI dragnet head and shoulders above the rest are the charges of trafficking in human body parts. It’s not surprising when 80,000 Americans are waiting for kidneys.

Man refused liver transplant dies
Jul 20, 2009 (BBC) A man from east London who began binge-drinking at 13 has died after being denied a life-saving liver transplant.

Recipient of Hands Making Progress
Jul 17, 2009 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

With deadpan humor, Jeff Kepner, the nation's first double hand transplant recipient, said that when he was wheeled to the news conference table yesterday, his first thought was: "Where's my water?" He was joking about the glasses of water sitting in front of his wife and all the doctors flanking him at UPMC Montefiore Hospital, and the obvious fact that 10 weeks after his historic surgery, he is not quite ready to lift a goblet and drain it. But he can clench his new hands slightly, and he was happy to demonstrate how he could use that motion to stack plastic cones on top of each other or drop checkers into a game of Connect Four.

Organ Donation: Why Be Altruistic about it?
Jul 17, 2009 (Knoxville News Sentinel)

As if we don’t have enough ethical issues to work through, here’s another one heading at us full steam: Why not let people sell their organs? The discussion began, for me, from having served on the Ethics Committee here at Fort Sanders Medical Center. My sister and I have tossed it around as well. She is a physician who has retired from private practice to enter the relatively new specialty in medical ethics, serving as a resource and adviser to her colleagues when difficult situations arise and the decisions that must be made are between two rights — or two wrongs.

Organ Donors Run Risk of Being Denied Health Insurance
Jul 16, 2009 (Los Angeles Times) By not making clear the financial risk of organ donation, insurers put donors in danger of losing affordable coverage and discourage potential donors from helping someone in need. Eight years ago, Los Angeles resident Patricia Abdullah decided to donate a kidney to an acquaintance. She calls it one of the proudest moments of her life. Last year, Abdullah, 61, lost her job with a publishing company. With it, she lost her employer-based health insurance. Now she wonders what will happen if she can't find another job with group coverage. If she turns to the individual insurance market, will her act of compassion as an organ donor be perceived by insurers as a "preexisting condition," resulting in higher premiums or even denial of coverage?

Kidney Exchange Benefits Boy, 5, and Woman
Jul 15, 2009 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

After the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC performed the country's first pediatric paired kidney donation on July 8, the two families involved in the reciprocal transplant met for the first time at the hospital this morning. Five-year-old Bennett Huibregtse of South Fayette and 37-year-old Jenny Neely of Canonsburg both received kidneys at the Children's Hospital through the Paired Donation Network. Bennett's father, 40-year-old Dean Huibregtse, donated his kidney to Ms. Neely, while Ms. Neely's aunt, 50-year-old Ruby Aguilar, gave her kidney to Bennet.

Girl's Heart Heals Itself 10 Years After Transplant
Jul 15, 2009 (CNN) Hannah Clark is a 16-year-old with a shy laugh and a love of animals. She likes to go shopping with friends and dreams of a career working with children. But Hannah Clark is no ordinary teenager and her normal life today could not have been possible without a unique, life-changing heart surgery. In 1994 when she was eight-months-old, Hannah was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy -- an inflammation of the heart muscle that impairs the heart's ability to work properly. Hannah's heart was failing and she needed a transplant. But instead of taking her own heart out, doctors added a new donated heart to her own when she was just two-years-old.

Japan Lifts Ban on Children Donating Organs
Jul 13, 2009 (Associated Press) Japan lifted a ban Monday on organ donations from children, reversing a restriction that created such a dearth of small organs in the country that young patients were forced to seek transplants abroad. The law will allow children, defined as those under 15, who are brain dead to donate their organs — a sea change in this country, where organ donating is sensitive because of Buddhist beliefs consider the body sacred and reject its desecration. Until 1997, Japan barred organ donations from even adults who were brain dead. A law enacted that year lifted the ban but continued to prohibit children from donating, citing their inability to make such a mature decision. It also only authorized organs to be taken from patients who specifically gave their consent — contributing to a severe shortage in the country.

The Current Organ Transplant System is Unfair, Inefficient, and Deadly
Jul 01, 2009 (Forbes)

Every year the shortage of human transplant organs grows worse. The number of patients waiting for transplants has increased five-fold since 1990, rising from 20,000 to just over 100,000 today. Annually, thousands die while waiting. The system isn't working and is riddled with inequity. Although there is no reason to think that Apple CEO Steve Jobs "jumped the line" to get his recent liver transplant, Jobs did have an advantage: He was able to choose which line to stand in.

Jobs' Travel to Transplant Mecca Shows System Flaws
Jun 29, 2009 (Bloomberg)  Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s chief executive officer, got a liver transplant quickly because of a U.S. system that favors patients with the means to rush to geographic areas where there is less competition for organs. Memphis, where Jobs got the transplant, is one of several U.S. meccas for liver patients who can afford to travel, doctors said. Flight records show Jobs’s personal jet flew at least six times this year from California, with one of the longest transplant lists in the U.S., to Memphis, where the wait is shorter.

First Artificial Heart Implanted Successfully
Jun 25, 2009 (TopNews United States)

The first successful artificial heart implant in the nation outside of a clinical trial was undertaken by surgeons at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Jersey reported Abiomed Inc. AbioCor Total Replacement Heart, a self contained devise mostly made of titanium and plastic designed to be fully implantable was implanted in a 76 year old man with congestive, end stage heart failure. He became eligible for the innovative procedure as he did not qualify for a heart transplant or other available therapies and was determined to be in severe end-stage heart failure.

Multi-Donor, Long-Distance Kidney Swap a Medical First for Canada
Jun 25, 2009 (CBC.ca)

Four Canadians have new kidneys Thursday thanks to the country's first pay-it-forward exchange of organs from Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver. Living-donor kidney swaps are based on the idea of group co-operation: a donor whose kidney isn't compatible with a loved one who needs a new kidney agrees to donate to a stranger. In exchange, the partner receives a kidney from someone else. Simultaneous kidney swaps have been done in Toronto before, but this multi-city swap had to be carefully co-ordinated across three time zones.

Stranger Kidney Donations Rising
Jun 24, 2009 (BBC News) Twenty-two people have given a kidney to a stranger since the practice became possible in the UK two years ago, the body in charge of such donations says. Ten put themselves forward in the first year and 15 in the second - three of these have not yet undergone surgery. The Human Tissue Authority (HTA), which decides whether people are suitable, said the numbers were "remarkable". There are currently 7,000 people waiting for a kidney in the UK amid a serious shortage of donor organs. To help tackle this shortage, the HTA changed the rules at the end of 2006 to allow those who were not related - either genetically or through marriage - to become living donors.

Don't Blame Steve Jobs for Scoring a Liver Transplant
Jun 24, 2009 (Chicago Tribune) If Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs used his billions to obtain a new liver ahead of less-privileged transplant patients, who's to blame? Not Jobs, says Arthur Caplan at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. "He did nothing illegal. And pursuing his own self-interest makes sense," Caplan said. Instead, the blame goes to transplant doctors, the United Network for Organ Sharing and Congressional leaders. They have failed to cut off an inside track that the rich, famous and gravely ill can follow to snare a spare part ahead of everybody else.

Steve Jobs' Liver Transplant Stirs Debate
Jun 23, 2009 (ABC News) Reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs traveled to an unnamed hospital in Tennessee for a liver transplant this March have sparked a debate over whether the wealthy are able to use their resources to game the national organ donation system. Representatives from Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple declined to answer specific questions from ABCNews.com or confirm the Wall Street Journal report that Jobs, 54, received a liver transplant. Instead, Apple released this statement: "Steve continues to look forward to returning to Apple at the end of June and there is nothing further to say."

Clergy Appeal over Organ Donors
Jun 23, 2009 (BBC News)

Leaders of the UK's main religions have appealed to their followers to support a campaign to register as organ donors. They are trying to counter uncertainty about what their religions teach about organ donation. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain and the Chief Rabbi are among those involved. Three people die a day in the UK because there is no suitable organ available for transplant for them. BBC News Religious Affairs Correspondent Robert Pigott says senior clergy report that some people are unsure what their religion teaches about the subject.

Did Steve Jobs Jump the Liver Transplant Queue?
Jun 22, 2009 (MinnPost.com) Since the Wall Street Journal announced on Friday that 54-year-old Steve Jobs, co-founder and chief executive of Apple Inc, underwent a liver transplant, questions have been raised about whether he got preferential treatment. Livers for transplant surgery aren’t easy to come by. As another WSJ article pointed out over the weekend, 5,771 Americans are currently awaiting a liver. Last year, 1,481 people died before they received one. The wait for liver transplants, WSJ reporter Laura Meckler wrote, “is particularly agonizing. Kidney replacements can often be put off for years through dialysis, where a machine does the work of the kidneys. But there is no such treatment for liver disease.”

Saving Dead for the Living
Jun 18, 2009 (Atlanta Journal Constitution) Saving the living has always been the No. 1 priority for a New York City ambulance crew. But a select group of paramedics soon may have a different task altogether: saving the dead. The city is considering creating a special ambulance whose crew would rush to collect the newly deceased and preserve the body so that the organs might be taken for transplant. The "rapid-organ-recovery ambulance," still in the early planning stages, could raise a host of ethical questions and strike some families as ghoulish. But top medical officials in the Fire Department and Bellevue Hospital say it has the potential to save hundreds of lives.

Japan Closer to Allowing Child Organ Transplants
Jun 18, 2009 (Reuters) Japan moved closer on Thursday to allowing children to receive organ transplants, when parliament's lower house approved a bill to scrap age limits on who can become an organ donor. Japan currently only allows organ transplants from brain dead people aged 15 or over, so sick children in need of organs must travel overseas to obtain a transplant. Activists and some lawmakers have been trying to change the rule for years, but the push for revisions gained momentum this year because the World Health Organisation was expected to ask countries to put restrictions on foreigners seeking organ transplants amid worries about transplant tourism.

Spain Leads the Way in Organ Donation
Jun 18, 2009 (CNN) Earlier this week, the case of Hiroki Ando, the Japanese 11-year-old boy who was denied a heart transplant in Japan, highlighted the vast cultural divide in attitudes towards organ transplant and availability worldwide. Hiroki had to travel to the U.S., where he is awaiting a heart, because Japan prohibits organ transplants involving children. His story highlights the wide range of policies around the world regarding organ donation. Organ donation has saved and improved countless lives. But medical advancements have led to a rise in demand for organs that is outpacing donation rates.

Boy not allowed to get life-saving transplant in Japan
Jun 15, 2009 (CNN) Eleven-year-old Hiroki Ando will likely die if he does not get a new heart. Hiroki suffers from cardiomyopathy, which inflames and impairs the heart. The same disease killed his sister five years ago. But the law in Japan prohibits anyone under the age of 15 from donating organs -- meaning Hiroki can't get a new heart in his home country.

Organ Transplant: Improving the Supply by Shifting the Policy
Jun 11, 2009 (NJ.com) Most people support organ donation and organ transplants but, as it turns out, they don't donate. Given the former, how do we encourage the latter? How does (or can) society encourage positive behavior? Should government attempt to affect certain decision-making behaviors? Whether we're talking about limiting climate change, for example, or promoting healthy living, or donating organs, one crucial question is whether (and, if yes, when) to use the techniques and tools of science, particularly cognitive science, to try to steer people toward better choices.

Will Receiving a Transplant Organ from a Murderer Make You Evil?
Jun 10, 2009 (Discover Magazine) Waiting for a healthy organ is one thing—waiting for a “moral” one is another. Despite the long wait time for many people awaiting organ transplants, some patients in the U.K. are reportedly willing to turn a healthy organ away if it comes from a criminal. While it may seem absurd, around a third of transplant patients have reported that they “take on” the personality traits of the organ’s original owner after a transplant, according to cognitive neuroscientist Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol.

China plans organ donation system to ease shortage
Jun 09, 2009 (Taiwan News) The Red Cross Society of China is developing a system to manage human organ donations and encourage the public to donate their organs and tissues after death, the China Daily newspaper said. No such system exists, making it difficult to allocate donated organs urgently needed for transplants by more than a million Chinese people every year. Only about 10,000 operations are performed annually, health officials say. China is working to establish a system to register organ donors across the country to ease a severe shortage in organs available for transplants, a state newspaper said Friday.

WHO: Only 10 Percent of Global Transplant Needs are Available
Jun 08, 2009 (New Straits Times)

About 100,000 organ transplants are performed worldwide every year, two-thirds of them being kidney transplants. However, only 10 per cent of the global need for organ transplants was available, forcing people to look at other ways of getting organs. As an example, he said, 10 per cent of the kidney transplants worldwide were performed under “transplant tourism”, Dr Luc Noel of the World Health Organisation said today. “Transplant tourism” involves not only the purchase and sale of organs, but also other elements relating to the commercialisation of organ transplantation. The international movement of potential recipients is often arranged or facilitated by intermediaries and health-care providers who arrange the travel, and recruit donors.

Decellularised Hybrid Hearts May Overcome Barriers to Transplantation
Jun 05, 2009 (Medgadget.com) Heart transplantation is plagued by difficulties, specifically by lack of organ availability and by the immune rejection once the organ has been implanted. To overcome these issues, researchers at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have created hybrid hearts using decellularised heart scaffolding from one rat and populating it with stem cells from another. The idea is fairly simple: take an organ from a human donor or animal (see image), and use a mild detergent to strip away flesh, cells and DNA so that all is left is the inner "scaffold" of collagen, an "immunologically inert" protein. Add stem cells from the relevant patient to this naked shell of an organ and they will differentiate into all the cells the organ needs to function without inducing an immune response after transplant, or any new infections.

Kidney Chain that Pays it Forward Could Help Thousands
Jun 05, 2009 (CBC.ca)

A joint kidney registry between Canada and the U.S., as well as better co-operation between Canadian health centres would speed up life-saving matches for patients, says a Calgary-trained doctor who pioneered live donor chains. Dr. Jeffrey Veale, who graduated from the University of Calgary and now works at UCLA, is one of the first doctors who promoted kidney transplant chains based on the idea of "paying it forward" — that the beneficiary of a good deed will, in turn, do one for someone else.

Text Messaging Medication Reminders Significantly Reduces Organ Rejection in Pediatric Liver Transplant Recipients
Jun 04, 2009 (PR Web) Mt. Sinai Medical Center's Pediatric Gastroenterology Department, under the leadership of Dr. Tamir Miloh, published results from a promising yearlong study conducted with pediatric liver transplant patients using CareSpeak Communications' MediM AS medication reminder system to keep them taking critical medication on schedule. Successful treatment of patients after Orthotopic Liver Transplantation (OLT) requires regular intake of medication and non-adherence with medication has been reported in up to 40% of adolescent OLT recipients. Non-adherence can include not taking the medication at the prescribed frequency, dose or time and can be deliberate or unintentional. Non-adherence has been associated with severe morbidity: acute/chronic rejection, end stage liver disease, hospitalizations, rising costs, re-transplantation and even death. The most common reported reason for non-adherence in OLT recipients is forgetfulness.

Transplant Organs from Pigs a Step Closer after Stem Cell Breakthrough
Jun 03, 2009 (Daily Mail)

Scientists are a step closer to 'growing' healthy human organs after creating the first stem cells - using domesticated pigs. Researchers have long known that animal tissue is a potential source for organ transplantation but attempts have had little success. But now a team of molecular biologists have created 'pluripotent' stem cells using pigs' ears and bone marrow.

Kidney Donations Reveal Unwelcome Familial Surprise
Jun 01, 2009 (National Post)

There can be few more intimate familial acts than donating a life-saving kidney to a sick child or parent, but in close to 3% of father-child organ donations, routine testing reveals there is no actual biological relationship between the two family members, a new Canadian study has concluded. Patients, donors and medical staff surveyed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario were divided on whether transplant programs should disclose such potentially explosive information to the families.

Organs Needed, Supply Limited
May 29, 2009 (Wall Street Journal) More than 1,000 Americans die every year awaiting a kidney transplant. Surgeons in the U.S. perform about 7,000 of the transplants annually, but that doesn't come close to meeting demand: As many as 250,000 patients require kidney dialysis -- all of them subsidized by Medicare -- but half of them are deemed not sick enough to warrant referral to a transplant program. The wait for a kidney transplant from a cadaver-donor can take seven years

Stem Cell Study Seeks to Wean Non-Related Transplant Recipients from Anti-Rejection Drugs
May 29, 2009 (Genetic Engineering News) The immunosuppressive drugs required by organ transplant recipients after surgery can have serious side effects with prolonged use, including infection, heart disease and cancer. In an effort to reduce, or potentially eliminate the need for anti-rejection medications, researchers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine are investigating the efficacy of a stem cell transplant after organ transplant. The study, which is the first to test the protocol on non-related living donor kidney pairs, involves transplanting stem cells from the kidney donor into the recipient one day following the organ transplant surgery.

Proposals to Shorten Transplant List Make No Gains
May 28, 2009 (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Each day, 17 Americans die while waiting for an organ transplant. That grim statistic emphasizes the fact that the waiting list for organs is bigger than ever -- its now sits at 102,118 -- and gives a special urgency to the debate over how to shrink the gap between supply and demand for these life-changing gifts. There are several proposals for increasing organ donations, none of which has made much progress in America so far.

'Right to Die' Row as Family Accuse Hospital of 'Wasting' Liver on Suicidal Father
May 27, 2009 (Cambridge Evening News) The family of a suicidal father-of-three who was given a liver transplant against his wishes have criticised the NHS for "wasting" a donor organ. David Woods, 56, had bi-polar disorder and was left with the mental age of a 6- year-old following a failed overdose attempt in December 2006. But David, who wanted to die, was given an emergency liver transplant on the NHS to prolong his life.

Economy affects organ donation
May 19, 2009 (Erie Times-News) The recession may quietly be taking a toll in an unexpected area -- organ transplants. After years of increases, the national numbers of live donors and those seeking transplants have declined at least partly for economic reasons, an expert says. What's more, 2008 was the first time in 20 years that there was a decline in the number of deceased donors used for transplants.

Wait for new organs gets longer
May 19, 2009 (Detroit News)

The national organ transplant waiting list is an essential lifeline -- but it's one that offers no guarantee. Nationwide, there are 101,943 people on the organ transplant waiting list. And the waiting list is getting longer. The number of people signing up to become donors has increased each year, but it's not keeping up with the number of patients that doctors are adding to the waiting list.

Jury Reaches Partial Verdict in UCLA Body Parts Trial
May 17, 2009 (KFWB News 980 Los Angeles) A jury has reached a partial verdict against a man accused in a lucrative scheme to buy and sell human body parts donated to a University of California medical school.

Organ Donation Practices Vary Among Pediatric Hospitals
May 14, 2009 (Medpage Today) Criteria for organ donation after cardiac death are better defined in pediatric hospitals than they once were, but policies still vary substantially between hospitals. Only 7% of surveyed pediatric hospitals were without policies to allow patients who do not meet neurological criteria for death to donate organs, Armand H. Matheny Antommaria, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, and colleagues reported in the May 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

First U.S. Face Transplant Recipient Offers Thanks
May 07, 2009 (CNN) In 2004, a bullet ripped away Connie Culp's nose, cheeks and upper jaw. Metal fragments sprayed into her skull and stripped her face away, leaving nothing except for her eyes, her chin and forehead.

Timing May Matter in Organ Donation Decisions
Apr 24, 2009 (US News and World Report) Whether a family decides to donate -- or not donate -- a dying relative's organs depends on many things, but who makes the request and when it's made are key, U.K. researchers have found.

The Reluctant Organ Donor
Apr 17, 2009 (New York Times) Most licensed drivers don’t sign up to be organ donors, and it may be due to fears about the organ donation process, a new survey suggests.

Wife of U.S. Face Transplant Donor Speaks Out
Apr 16, 2009 (USA Today) The wife of a man whose tissue was donated for the second face transplant in the United States said her husband told her before heart transplant surgery that he wanted to donate his organs if he didn't survive the operation. Susan Whitman told The Boston Globe for a story in Wednesday's editions that she was surprised, however, when organ bank officials asked if she would approve of the donation of Joseph Helfgot's face.

Bioethics experts challenge the 'Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (2006)'
Apr 15, 2009 (Renew America) The following letter to the editor by three bioethics experts was recently submitted to Critical Care Medicine.

Implications of an Organ Bank for Jamaica
Apr 06, 2009 (Jamaica Gleaner News) This intriguing possibility of an organ bank in Jamaica has medical, moral, ethical, religious, cultural as well as legal considera-tions, in Jamaica's cultural context.

Egypt Pressured to End Underground Organ Trade
Mar 17, 2009 (Associated Press) The poverty of Cairo's slums forced a young couple to sell nearly everything they had. When that wasn't enough, each of them sold a kidney.

China Investigates Illegal Transplants for Tourists
Feb 17, 2009 (New York Times) China said Tuesday it was investigating whether 17 Japanese tourists had received illegal kidney and liver transplants in China.

Face Transplants Raise Difficult Ethical Questions
Feb 09, 2009 (Kansas City Star) What if face transplants succeed? We know what to do if they fail. We will criticize the injustice of spending too much money on one patient when, instead, millions of children could have been immunized (even though the money would not have been available for immunizations).

Paying Organ Donors' Expenses at Center of Ethics Debate
Jan 29, 2009 (USA Today) Organ donors, living and dead, would receive more money for expenses under an initiative being proposed today designed to shorten the wait for transplants.

Kidney Donors Have a Normal Life Span, Study Finds
Jan 29, 2009 (Los Angeles Times) Potential kidney donors can stop worrying about the long-term effects such a donation might have on their health and longevity.

Family Turns to Web in Search of Donor
Jan 27, 2009 (LoHud.com) Even on Dec. 12, the day Danny Flood was to receive a new lease on his life with a kidney transplant, he says he didn't believe it was actually going to happen. "I wasn't sure if she (the donor) would show up; she could have backed out at any time," said Flood, 68, sitting in his Pleasantville home after his successful transplant at Westchester Medical Center.

Bioethicists Save Organ Donation by Tweaking the Definition of Death
Jan 14, 2009 (Wired) In response to an emerging moral controversy over whether most vital organs used in transplants are technically taken from living people, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a new report that defines brain death as the cessation of engagement with the world.

'I Want My Kidney Back' Says Doc
Jan 08, 2009 (Sky News) Richard Batista from Long Island in New York, US, says he wants the organ back or £2.1m ($1.5m).

Building a Better Kidney Transplant
Jan 04, 2009 (TIME) For more than 100,000 patients in the U.S., their life depends on finding an organ to replace a damaged or diseased one. In the never-ending tug between organ supply and demand, the scales have never tipped in favor of the patient; only a fraction of the people needing a new kidney, liver or heart actually receive one. To move people off the organ-waiting list, doctors either have to boost the supply of donors, or improve the viability of existing organs.

Doctor Cleared of Harming Man to Obtain Organs
Dec 19, 2008 (New York Times) A California transplant surgeon was acquitted on Thursday of a charge that he had intentionally harmed a donor to speed extraction of the patient’s kidney and liver. The verdict closed a case that had drawn widespread attention to the medical, and ethical, complexities of organ transplantation.

Transplanting a Face: The Ethical Issues
Dec 18, 2008 (New York Times) A face transplant is different from other kinds of transplants, medical ethicists said on Wednesday, and the risks and benefits to the patient must be weighed carefully.

Doctors Perform 'Near Total' Face Transplant on Woman in United States
Dec 16, 2008 (Telegraph UK) Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio, announced they had performed 'the first near total face transplant' with skin from a donor.

Short on Cash, Some Put a Price on Themselves
Dec 05, 2008 (MSNBC) Before this fall, it might not have occurred to Michael Aylesworth to swap his sperm for money. But faced with rising bills, a dwindling budget and a fractured economy, the 30-year-old Seattle man took stock of some very personal assets — and decided to sell.

A World Away, Finding a Lifeline and a Friend
Nov 10, 2008 (New York Times) In 2000, after 31 years of robust health, James Chippendale, a wealthy Dallas business executive who had traveled much of the world, was found to be suffering from a lethal form of leukemia. Mr. Chippendale’s doctors told him that his only chance of survival was a bone marrow transplant, and that the likelihood of finding a matching donor seemed bleak.

Tweens And Teens Double Use Of Diabetes Drugs
Nov 03, 2008 (Science Daily) America's tweens and teens more than doubled their use of type 2 diabetes medications between 2002 and 2005, with girls between 10 and 14 years of age showing a 166 percent increase. One likely cause: Obesity, which is closely associated with type 2 diabetes.

Artificial Muscle Could Keep Hearts Beating
Sep 17, 2008 (New Scientist Tech) An implantable artificial muscle could offer hope for people suffering from atrial fibrillation, a debilitating heart condition that affects millions.

Face transplants: a better life beats a longer life
Aug 24, 2008 (The Times Online UK) THREE partial face transplants have been performed worldwide and they have all been successful. Overnight three people were given back a life where they could interact with friends and family as well as strangers without feeling ostracised for their facial disfigurement.

Quick harvest of infant hearts incites debate
Aug 14, 2008 (MSNBC) A report on three heart transplants involving babies is focusing attention on a touchy issue in the organ donation field: When and how can someone be declared dead?

The Ugly Business of Chinese Organ Harvests
Aug 07, 2008 (France 24)

Hundreds of wealthy foreigners flock to China as a shortcut to the organ transplant that could save their life, but few know that their "donors" are often unwilling death-sentence convicts. A look behind the scenes of this morbid trade.

Teen Denied Surgery Now Has New Liver
Jul 16, 2008 (Tampa Tribune) A Pinellas County teenager is recovering this week from a liver transplant just weeks after another hospital removed him from an organ waiting list, in part because of his status as a foster child.

Pioneering heart surgeon DeBakey dies at age 99
Jul 12, 2008 (Reuters UK) Surgeon Michael DeBakey, whose ground-breaking heart transplants and coronary bypass operations made him one of the giants of 20th century medicine, has died at age 99.

Jackson offers hope to boy in need of transplant
Jul 10, 2008 (Miami Herald) A disabled foster child whose quest for a life-saving liver transplant was rejected by a Central Florida hospital because he has no stable home is expected to arrive in Miami Wednesday to begin testing with Jackson Memorial Hospital's organ-transplant team.

Getting consent ahead of time for "suboptimal" organs
Jun 25, 2008 (MSNBC) Writing in NEJM, a group from Penn is calling for the transplant system to ask recipients at the time of their enrollment whether they would accept higher-risk organs.  A member of the UNOS ethics committee says the plan is a "solution in search of a problem."

Japanese mob transplants at UCLA get Senate's attention
Jun 08, 2008 (LA Times) Senator Charles Grassley has sent letters seeking more info about the transplants to UCLA, UNOS, HHS and the Joint Commission.

Japanese mob boss made big donation after UCLA transplant
Jun 01, 2008 (LA Times) The mob boss and another man also said to have mob connections each donated $100,000 after receiving livers at UCLA. The hospital says the money had no bearing on the transplants.

Japanese mob members got liver transplants at UCLA
May 30, 2008 (LA Times) There's no evidence doctors at the medical center knew of the patients' criminal ties. But ethicists say the transplants are troubling because organs are in such short supply in the US.

Taking chances on donor kidneys
May 14, 2008 (Boston Globe) A hard-to-detect virus has killed one kidney recipient and sickened another in Boston. The donor kidneys had been considered high-risk because they came from a homeless man. Experts say the use of such high risk organs is the result of severe organ scarcity.

Rapid organ recovery
May 07, 2008 (USA Today) New York City has a plan to equip ambulance crews to prep bodies for organ harvest -- before receiving consent from families. No organs would actually be removed without consent.

Medical pot patient, held off transplant list, dies
May 04, 2008 (Seattle Times) Timothy Garon died last week at a hospice in Seattle of liver disease. His lawyer believes Garon was bumped from the transplant list because of his use of prescribed marijuana.

Medical marijuana and transplants
Apr 27, 2008 (AP) Patients who have used physician-prescribed medical marijuana are being bumped from transplant lists. Some have been told they can reapply if they stay off the pot for six months or go into addiction treatment.

Chain of transplants swaps 6 kidneys at once
Apr 08, 2008 (AP) The set of procedures performed at Johns Hopkins is reportedly the largest-ever swap of its kind.  The transplants were performed simultaneously to prevent donors from backing out.

A third of patients on UNOS waiting list not eligible
Mar 23, 2008 (Washington Post) That's according to a breakdown by the org itself. Critics say the list is misleading the public and policy makers.

California transplant doctor to stand trial
Mar 21, 2008 (LA Times) The surgeon is accused of hastening the death of a patient in order to harvest organs.  He'll stand trial on felony abuse charges.

Egypt's thriving organ trade
Mar 14, 2008 (LA Times) The country has no laws regarding transplants and little oversight. A kidney can go for as much as $7300 in Egypt.

Boston hospital gets OK for face transplants
Mar 05, 2008 (Boston Globe) The New England Organ Bank authorized Brigham and Women's hospital to perform partial face transplants.  The first candidates will be recipients of donated kidneys because those patients are already on immunosuppressant drugs.

Two lungs are better than one
Feb 28, 2008 (AFP) A paper in the Lancet reports that COPD patients who receive two transplanted lungs, instead of one, live on median about two years longer.  The problem: there aren't enough donor lungs to go around.

Woman donates kidney after seeing flyer
Feb 27, 2008 (AP) The recipient was an 8-year-old.  The donor saw the flier at the school where her children and the recipient all attend.

Hearings begin in organ harvesting case
Feb 27, 2008 (NYT) A California doctor is accused of speeding the death of patient so a transplant team could retrieve the patient's organs.  The president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons called the case unprecedented.

Who wants to buy a pancreas?
Feb 12, 2008 (Canadian Press) A Quebec man with a rare condition is trying to sell his pancreas online.  The man reportedly decided to market his organ after a Montreal hospital told him it would not release the organ to him following a pancreatectomy.  He seems to have found no takers, so far.

Do you own your body?
Feb 10, 2008 (Toronto Star) Some say a government prohibition on selling our organs means we don't actually own our bodies.  Others argue that's not necessarily true -- but it doesn't mean we should be able to sell our kidneys, either.

Doctor accused of masterminding Indian kidney thefts arrested
Feb 07, 2008 (AFP) Police apprehended Amit Kumar and his brother in Nepal.  Kumar reportedly fled India after details of his massive illegal organ transplant operation surfaced last month.

Mass kindey theft in India
Jan 30, 2008 (New York Times) Police say an illegal transplant operation had forcibly removed kidneys from about 500 people during the last nine years in a city just outside New Delhi.  The ring's leader seems to have escaped arrest.

Transplant doctors report anti-rejection advance
Jan 24, 2008 (AP) A team from Mass. General Hospital reports in this week's NEJM that it was able to partially reprogram the immune systems of kidney transplant patients by giving the recipients bone marrow from the donor.  Of the five patients treated this way, four are now living without the use of anti-rejection meds five years later.

UK Prime Minister calls for "presumed consent" organ donation
Jan 14, 2008 (CNN) In a recent op-ed, Gordon Brown calls the UK's shortage of available transplant organs an "an avoidable human tragedy."  The plan he's backing would move the UK's organ donation system from opt-in to opt-out.

Kidney donation as religious act
Dec 16, 2007 (Wall Street Journal) A group called the Jesus Christians has taken up kidney donations as an implementation of Jesus' teachings.  Others call the group a cult and say the donations are a publicity stunt.

First face transplant patient "very satisified"
Dec 13, 2007 (Washington Post) Doctors report in NEJM that the patient has battled rejection of the transplanted tissue, but she has regained normal skin senation and control of facial muscles.  While the procedure has won over some skeptics, others are still worried about the long term viability of the transplant and psychological effects.

Donate a kidney, get free health insurance?
Nov 21, 2007 (The Times (UK)) The Dutch health minister is considering a recommendation to offer free health insurance for life to kidney donors.  The Netherlands has one of Europe's longest waiting lists for donated kidneys.

Video: 'Sick Girl' Tells Dark Side of Transplants
Oct 29, 2007 (CNN) CNN's Kiran Chetry talks to the author of a candid memoir about life after a heart transplant.

Toxic Gas 'May Help Transplants'
Oct 21, 2007 (BBC) Scientists say they have found a safe way to give carbon monoxide to help organ transplant patients.

Cell-squirting Needles Could 'Weave' New Organs
Oct 13, 2007 (New Scientist) A new approach to "printing" living cells could make it easier to arrange them into precise structures without harming them. This could enable future therapies where replacement organs can be printed to order.

Organ Donation a 'Christian Duty'
Oct 09, 2007 (BBC) The Church of England has declared organ donation to be a Christian duty, in a Parliamentary consultation.

Heart Transplant Breaks Taboos in Malaysia
Oct 08, 2007 (Associated Press) An ethnic Chinese Malaysian girl who had two heart transplants has helped break cultural taboos over organ donation after one of the hearts came from a Muslim boy who died in a road crash.

Britain Considers Organ Donation by Default
Sep 29, 2007 (New Scientist) With the gap between donated organ supply and demand widening, the UK government is considering a system of presumed consent for donation.

New Limits Debated for Organ Donation
Sep 14, 2007 (Wall Street Journal) Voluntary guidelines on living organ donation -- which aim to better screen potential living donors and limit who can become a donor -- have already been watered down, and it is unclear if they will be approved at all.

New Zeal in Organ Procurement Raises Fears
Sep 13, 2007 (Washington Post) Organ donation groups say they walk a fine line; critics see potential for abuses.

The Solvable Problem of Organ Shortages
Aug 30, 2007 (N.Y. Times) Although willingness to donate organs has risen in recent years, major hurdles remain.

Age Is Found No Barrier to Liver Transplants
Aug 21, 2007 (MedPageToday) In an 18-year review of more than 900 orthotopic liver transplants, there was no survival difference between patients who were 70 or older and those who were younger.

Cancer Tackled in Transplant Patients
Aug 15, 2007 (BBC) Injecting healthy blood cells into transplant patients with cancer improves survival, a study suggests.

His Heart Whirs Anew
Aug 12, 2007 (Washington Post) Peter Houghton is grateful for his artificial heart, but lately he finds that he doesn't feel emotions in the same way he once did.

High Demand Fuels Global Body Parts Trade
Aug 06, 2007 (Reuters) International groups call for a crackdown on 'transplant tourism.'

British Lawmakers Back Savior Siblings
Aug 03, 2007 (New Scientist (Premium)) Should parents be allowed to choose their baby to save the life of an older child? Many more such "savior siblings" could be permitted in the UK, argues a parliamentary report.

Transplant Case Could Affect Donations
Aug 01, 2007 (Associated Press) Allegations that a transplant surgeon tried to speed a patient's death to recover his organs could dissuade potential donors at a time when the national waiting list for critical organs keeps growing, some experts say.

Singapore Muslims in Donor Ruling
Jul 28, 2007 (BBC) Singapore's Muslims should be treated as willing organ donors, the city-state's Islamic authority says, removing their exemption from a law allowing doctors to remove the heart, kidneys or liver.

Should People Pay for New Organs?
Jul 13, 2007 (BBC) Could it ever be right to pay for organ donation?

China Tightens Restrictions on Transplants
Jul 04, 2007 (Washington Post) Beijing imposes new restrictions on organ transplants for foreigners as part of an effort to curtail widely reported abuses.

TV Kidney Competition Was a Hoax
Jun 02, 2007 (BBC) A Dutch TV competition in which patients vied to win a dying woman's kidneys is revealed as a hoax.

EU-Wide Organ Donor Card Proposed
May 30, 2007 (BBC) The EU is considering introducing a donor card to address a shortage of transplant organs across member states.

Contestants to Vie for Kidney on Reality Show
May 29, 2007 (Associated Press) A Dutch reality show that claims to be trying to draw attention to a shortage of organ donors said Tuesday it would go ahead with a program in which a terminally ill woman will choose a contestant to receive one of her kidneys.

6 Arrests Made in Kidney Selling Case
May 26, 2007 (Associated Press) Police arrested the owner of a private hospital in eastern Pakistan and three doctors after they were implicated in the illegal trade and transplant of kidneys.

Transplanted Heart Does Double Duty
May 11, 2007 (Reuters) Two months ago at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, surgeons removed a transplanted heart from a patient who had died and retransplanted it in another recipient.

Black-Market Scandal Shakes India's Ban on Organ Sales
May 09, 2007 (Wired) Little more than a decade after enacting a toughly worded ban on human organ sales, India is rethinking its transplant stance amid one of the nation's worst organ scandals.

New Push Likely for Restrictions Over Abortions
Apr 20, 2007 (N.Y. Times) Legislation limiting abortions could face headwinds in states where Democrats made gains in the last election.

Potential Organ Donor Was Wrongly Declared Brain-Dead
Apr 12, 2007 (L.A. Times) A man whose family agreed to donate his organs for transplant upon his death was wrongly declared brain-dead by two doctors at a Central California hospital, raiseing concerns about the medical care of those who have promised their organs for transplants.

China Issues New Rules on Transplants
Apr 07, 2007 (Associated Press) China published new rules governing human organ transplants in its latest effort to clean up a business critics say has little regard for medical ethics, although the new rules fail to address the issue of the procurement of organs from executed prisoners.

Man's Pig-Cell Implants Still Active 10 Years On
Apr 07, 2007 (New Scientist) A decade ago, diabetic Michael Helyer was implanted with pancreatic cells from pigs in the hope of restoring his insulin production - they are still working.

States Revising Organ-Donation Law
Apr 04, 2007 (Washington Post) Initiative tries to alleviate the chronic shortage of body parts, an effort that some fear tilts too far toward allowing organs to be taken.

Organ Trafficking Threatens Donor Programs
Apr 02, 2007 (Reuters) Illegal trafficking of human organs from poor to rich countries threatens to undermine donation programs in industrialized states and worsen a growing shortage.

Donor Shortage Leads to 'Transplant Tourism'
Mar 30, 2007 (Associated Press) Demand for human organ transplants far exceeds supply, fueling the growing trend of “transplant tourism” from wealthy countries to developing nations where organs can be bought.

Paying Big to Be A Donor
Mar 23, 2007 (Washington Post) Gifting an organ can be costly. Would a tax break cross a moral line?

2-for-1 Transplant Lets Patients Split a Liver
Mar 19, 2007 (Associated Press) There’s a push to increase liver-splitting that could have many more people who are awaiting transplants being asked to share a piece of their new organ.

New Trend in Organ Donation Raises Questions
Mar 18, 2007 (Washington Post) The number of kidneys, livers and other body parts surgeons are harvesting through a controversial approach to organ donation has started to rise rapidly, a trend that is saving the lives of more waiting patients but, some say, risks sacrificing the interests of the donors.

Death in Organ Donor Case Is Ruled Natural
Mar 10, 2007 (L.A. Times) The San Luis Obispo County sheriff-coroner has concluded that a 26-year-old potential organ donor died of natural causes, complicating a criminal inquiry into whether a transplant surgeon attempted to hasten the man's death.

Organ Transplant Failures Linked to Drug Costs
Mar 08, 2007 (Reuters) After children and adolescents receive an organ transplant, more than 90 percent do well at the one-year mark. Thereafter, the rate of loss of the grafted organ increases, and is often related to the inability to pay for immune suppressing drugs.

Report Tells of Errors in Organ Case
Mar 02, 2007 (L.A. Times) U.S. regulators detail how a potential donor was given huge doses of sedatives and painkillers as six people watched.

Surgeon Transplants Ovary Into Cancer Survivor
Feb 13, 2007 (Associated Press) Such surgery could restore normal hormone function for women going through early menopause. It also could mean that women with cancer could freeze their ovaries, undergo chemotherapy and radiation, and later regain their fertility.

Doctors Explore Use of Mismatched Hearts
Feb 12, 2007 (Associated Press) Several babies around the world have received mismatched heart transplants, part of a growing movement to increase these tiniest patients' survival by taking advantage of a lag in their immune systems.

Indians Buy Organs With Impunity
Feb 09, 2007 (Wired) Authorities arrest three organ brokers in the state of Tamil Nadu, where hundreds say they've illegally sold their organs while the government turns a blind eye.

Tuskegee's Ghosts: Fear Hinders Black Marrow Donation
Feb 07, 2007 (CNN) Currently, only 8 percent of people on the national list to donate bone marrow are black, but about 12 percent of the population is black.

Tsunami Victims Sold Kidneys to Survive?
Feb 02, 2007 (Times of India) Indian police say they have uncovered evidence of illegal trade in kidneys sold by fishermen and their families whose livelihoods were destroyed by the tsunami.

4 More Heart Transplant Programs May Lose US Funds
Feb 01, 2007 (L.A. Times) The federal government has notified four more heart transplant programs, that their federal funding may be pulled because they performed too few transplants in recent years to remain proficient.

Prospect of Womb Transplant Raises Hopes and Red Flags
Jan 30, 2007 (N.Y. Times) The risks associated with a uterus transplant would be enormous, but for some women, the chance to carry a baby would be worth it.

Turning the Grief-Stricken Toward Organ Donation
Jan 16, 2007 (N.Y. Times) The number of organ donors in New York has increased, thanks in part to a program that teaches nurses how to approach grieving family members.

First U.S. Uterus Transplant Planned
Jan 15, 2007 (Washington Post) Operation marks confluence of two medical specialties -- transplant surgery and reproductive medicine -- that frequently spark controversy.

New Approach Matches Kidney Quality, Life Span
Jan 04, 2007 (S.F. Chronicle) If you were offered a lower-quality kidney to shorten your stay on the organ transplant waiting list, would you take it?

A Test of Faith in Strangers
Dec 30, 2006 (L.A. Times) There are a billion people on the Internet, and perhaps someone, somewhere, has a kidney to spare.

Creation of New Organs a Step Closer
Dec 28, 2006 (Guardian) Scientists are a step closer to growing replacement organs and tissues which can be transplanted into patients. Their breakthrough uses tiny protein scaffolds that encourage stem cells to grow into three-dimensional structures for the first time.

Double Hand Transplant 'Success'
Dec 28, 2006 (BBC) A woman who became the first in the world to receive a double hand transplant has left the hospital.

Kidney Transplants Linked to Tripled Risk of Cancers
Dec 20, 2006 (New Scientist) Researchers say immune-suppressing drugs taken by the patients may be to blame and that, generally, viruses may cause more cancers than thought.

China Agrees to Ban Transplant Tourism
Dec 04, 2006 (New Scientist) The nation finally bows to pressure to ban the practice of treating rich westerners with "donated" organs, often taken from executed prisoners.

Transplant Dilemma Grows
Nov 29, 2006 (San Jose Mercury News) What is an acceptable relationship between donor and patient, and who defines it? Is it ethical if some people "jump ahead" of other, sicker patients on organ waiting lists simply because they are able to find a donor?

Doctors: Face Transplant Was Successful
Nov 29, 2006 (Associated Press) A year after a Frenchwoman received the world's first partial face transplant, doctors say the operation was a success and she is gaining more and more sensitivity and facial mobility.

Used Pacemaker Could Keep Someone Else Ticking
Nov 27, 2006 (Chicago SunTimes) Although it is illegal in the United States to reuse pacemakers and defibrillators in other patients, it is legal to donate such devices to poor patients in developing countries.

5-Way Kidney Swap Performed
Nov 21, 2006 (Associated Press) It took 12 surgeons, six operating rooms and five donors to pull it off, but five desperate strangers simultaneously received new organs in what hospital officials Monday described as the first-ever quintuple kidney transplant.

China Admits Taking Executed Prisoners' Organs
Nov 18, 2006 (L.A. Times) After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.

Poor Pakistanis Donate Kidneys for Money
Nov 13, 2006 (Associated Press) Nassem Kausar has done it. So, she says, have her sister, six brothers, five sisters-in-law and two nephews. Each has sold a kidney to a trade that has led Pakistan's media to dub the country a "kidney bazaar."

Diabetes Shouldn't Nix Heart Transplant
Nov 07, 2006 (Associated Press) Diabetics who don't have other health problems survive heart transplants about as well as nondiabetics, according to a new study, which suggests diabetes shouldn't disqualify patients from a transplant waiting list.

With Kidney Transplants, A Question of How to Ration Life
Nov 05, 2006 (L.A. Times) More older patients are getting the organs. But possible new rules may cut their odds.

Iran's Desperate Kidney Traders
Oct 31, 2006 (BBC) On streets and in town squares in Iran, young men and women can be seen holding signs offering their kidneys for sale.

A Better Way to Build a Face
Oct 30, 2006 (Wired) Facial scarring is one of the toughest challenges for plastic surgeons, and full transplants may be the best option for some patients. But a Stanford team wants to learn how to grow a new face instead.

'The Right Patient For a Face Transplant is Out There Today'
Oct 29, 2006 (Guardian) Pioneering surgeon Peter Butler has a lifelong dream to cure disfigurement. In this interview, he explains why the doubters are wrong about the benefits.

Seven Undertakers Admit Role in Corpse Scam
Oct 20, 2006 (BBC) Seven undertakers in the New York arrea have admitted being part of a scheme to steal body parts for transplants.

Organ Transplant Centers Face Federal Scrutiny
Oct 06, 2006 (Washington Post) Several long-established heart transplant centers are under scrutiny by federal officials because they have done too few operations in recent years, repeatedly performing less than half of the minimum considered necessary to maintain surgical skills and patient care.

Legalize Organ Sales to Ease Severe Shortage, Say
Oct 05, 2006 (Independent) The sale of human organs should be legalized to help solve the worldwide shortage of donors, according to a leading surgeon.

Organ Sales 'Thriving' in China
Sep 27, 2006 (BBC) The sale of organs taken from executed prisoners appears to be thriving in China, an undercover investigation has found.

Diabetes Treatment Disappoints in New Study
Sep 27, 2006 (N.Y. Times) A new study finds that transplants of insulin-making cells, which reversed severe diabetes in an initial trial, have not lived up to their early promise.

Closer to Fooling the Eye
Sep 25, 2006 (L.A. Times) The latest artificial corneas show promise in fusing with natural tissue, a step toward smoother transplants.

Body Parts Scandal Prompts Industry Changes
Sep 24, 2006 (Associated Press) The nation’s tissue bankers are considering new rules aimed at preserving public trust in their industry, following two recent scandals that made some of them appear like body snatchers.

Lung Patients See New Era of Transplants
Sep 24, 2006 (N.Y. Times) A quiet revolution in the world of lung transplants is saving the lives of people who just two years ago would have died waiting.

Bogus Records Raise More Fears in Tissue Trade
Sep 18, 2006 (Associated Press) The release of Alistair Cooke's tissue donation records raise even more questions about the safety of the cadaver tissue industry.

Man Undergoes, Rejects First Penis Transplant
Sep 18, 2006 (Guardian) Chinese surgeons have performed the world's first penis transplant on a man whose organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year. The procedure represents a big leap forward in transplant surgery; it required complex microsurgery to connect nerves and tiny blood vessels.

Protcol Breathes New Life into Lung Donation
Sep 16, 2006 (MedPageToday) The shortage of lungs deemed suitable for transplantation could be eased with a combination of medical management of donor organs and less stringent acceptance criteria, researchers here asserted.

Men Donating Kidneys in Four-Way Swap
Sep 13, 2006 (MSNBC/AP) Two men are donating kidneys to each other's wives in a four-way surgical swap at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital on Wednesday. It is the first time such a swap among healthy, living donors and patients with kidney failure has taken place at the hospital.

Transplants Made to Order
Sep 06, 2006 (The Scientist) The possibility that we might engineer replacements for worn out tissues is increasingly plausible.

Artificial Heart Gets Limited FDA Approval
Sep 06, 2006 (Washington Post) The Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved for use the first totally implantable artificial heart under a program that will make the complicated, $250,000 device available for as many as 4,000 people.

Comment: The Death of Reason
Sep 02, 2006 (Guardian) Why the UK's new Human Tissue Act challenges the irrationality of objecting to organ donation.

Scandal Grows Over Suspect Body Parts
Aug 31, 2006 (New Scientist) For the second time this year, a firm supplying body parts for surgery has been shut down by the FDA - and more scandals are expected from the booming industry.

How a Rogue Body Broker Got Away With It
Aug 27, 2006 (Associated Press) Poor testing or treatment of donated tissue can lead to severe infections, and even death. Oversight is up to the FDA, but it relies on broad-brush rules. The American Association of Tissue Banks has strict standards, but the FDA does not require companies to join or to abide by these rules.

HMO Fined Over Kidney Transplant Program
Aug 11, 2006 (Associated Press) Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest health maintenance organization, will pay a $2 million fine and give $3 million to an organ donor program because of mismanagement of a kidney transplant center, California state officials said Thursday.

Not Brain-Dead But Ripe for Transplant
Aug 04, 2006 (New Scientist) A drive to increase the number of human organs taken before they become unusable is dividing the medical world.

Domino Strategy: One Kidney Transplant Sparks Two or More
Jul 29, 2006 (MedPageToday) The shortage of kidneys for transplant could be eased by the selfless kindness of living strangers if an approach called the domino strategy were adopted widely, according to researchers.

Rare Disease Reported in Transplants
Jul 27, 2006 (Associated Press) Two U.S. heart transplant patients who died earlier this year had contracted a parasitic tropical disease from their new organs, health officials reported Thursday.

Black Market Kidney Surgery Offers No Guarantees
Jul 27, 2006 (MedPageToday) Shopping abroad for black market donor kidneys to bypass lengthy North American organ queues can come back to haunt recipients, investigators reported at this week's World Transplant Congress.

Freakonomics and the Flesh Trade
Jul 09, 2006 (N.Y. Times) In the space of just a few decades, transplant surgery has become safe and reliable (to say nothing of miraculous). But success breeds demand: as more patients get new organs, more patients want them. To an economist, this is a basic supply-and- demand gap with tragic consequences.

20% of U.S. Transplant Centers Are Found to Be Substandard
Jun 29, 2006 (L.A. Times) About a fifth of federally funded transplant programs fail to meet the government's minimum standards for patient survival or perform too few operations to ensure competency, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found.

Organ Receiver Believes Cash Would Bring in More Donors
Jun 26, 2006 (Chicago Tribune) Psychiatrist Sally Satel, a resident scholar at the ideologically right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, believes that much of the medical profession and bioethicists have missed the boat by creating an organ donation system in which altruism is the prime motivator.

First UK Face Transplants Get Go-Ahead
Jun 18, 2006 (Independent) Although the first patients are yet to be selected, the ethical committee of north London's Royal Free Hospital is expected on Wednesday to give its approval for a full face transplant.

Death by Geography
Jun 11, 2006 (L.A. Times) Patients' chances of getting new organs in time to save their lives vary vastly based on where they live. The situation is most dire for people needing livers.

First Beating-Heart Transplant Gives Hope for Future Patients
Jun 05, 2006 (Independent) Surgeons have successfully kept a human heart alive and beating outside the body, in a medical advance that could extend life-saving heart transplants to scores more patients.

Would You Give Your Kidney to a Stranger?
Jun 02, 2006 (CNN) Psychiatrists, surgeons and ethicists are split on the issue of whether people should donate organs to strangers.

Rodent Virus Deaths Raise Need for Transplant Tracking System
May 25, 2006 (EurekAlert) After the deaths of seven people from a virus transmitted through organ donation in the past two years, authorities are recommending that a tracking system be put in place to monitor patients following transplantation.

Feds Probe Kidney Transplant Program
May 18, 2006 (Washington Post) Federal health regulators have launched an investigation into a Kaiser Permanente kidney transplant program that reportedly put hundreds of patients' lives at risk by bungling paperwork that prolonged or canceled procedures.

For Two Transplant Patients, a Dire Complication: West Nile
May 16, 2006 (N.Y. Times) In 2005, more than 28,000 transplants were done. Two patients are known to have become ill from West Nile as a result of the procedure.

Kaiser Suspends Kidney Transplant Program
May 13, 2006 (S.F. Chronicle) Kaiser Permanente suspended its kidney transplant program in northern California on Friday, following accusations that patients' lives were endangered by botched paperwork and administrative errors.

California Steps In on Kaiser Transplants
May 10, 2006 (L.A. Times) The state's top HMO regulator said late Tuesday that Kaiser Permanente would pay for kidney transplants at outside hospitals for patients dissatisfied with Kaiser's troubled new transplant program in Northern California.

Kaiser Transplant Patients Express Their Fear and Fury
May 06, 2006 (L.A. Times) News about the flawed start-up of Kaiser Permanente's Northern California transplant program this week has unleashed bitter recollections and powerful emotions among patients who say that for months they have had their appointments inexplicably canceled, records lost and pleas met with eerie indifference.

Kaiser Denied Transplants of Ideally Matched Kidneys
May 05, 2006 (L.A. Times) Twenty-five Kaiser Permanente patients in Northern California were denied the chance for new kidneys that were nearly perfectly matched to them last year during the troubled start-up of the giant HMO's kidney transplant program in San Francisco.

A Painless Donation, an Enduring Lifeline
May 02, 2006 (N.Y. Times) Most people, and even many doctors, are unaware of the tremendous strides that have been made in the field of bone marrow transplants.

Stolen Body Parts Linked to Patients' Illnesses
Apr 28, 2006 (Associated Press) At least a dozen people who had routine operations claim they caught deadly viruses and other germs from body parts stolen from corpses in a ghoulish scandal that has sent hundreds of people for tests.

Are Movies, TV Scaring Off Organ Donors?
Apr 26, 2006 (Reuters) A lot of misconceptions about organ donation are being fed by the entertainment industry, warns a Purdue University health communications expert who is tracking how organ donation is portrayed on TV and trying to dispel myths about organ donation in the workplace.

Cash Payments for Organs?
Apr 22, 2006 (UPI) The widening gap between patients needing transplanted organs and the number of persons willing to give them is prompting some experts to call for new -- and often radical -- ways to spur donations.

Patients Seeking Transplants Turn to China
Apr 17, 2006 (S.F. Chronicle) Hundreds of Americans and other foreigners are now finding their last, best chance for survival with organ transplants in China. But human rights activists are raising ethical concerns, saying transplant doctors there who cater to foreigners may be harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their permission, just for financial gain.

Pioneering Surgery on Girl Reverses Heart Transplant
Apr 13, 2006 (Guardian) A 12-year-old girl given a heart transplant 10 years ago is believed to have become the first person in the UK to have the donor organ removed and her own heart reconnected.

Doctors Grow Organs from Patients' Own Cells
Apr 04, 2006 (L.A. Times) In a major advance toward the development of artificial organs, bladders grown from patients' own cells in the laboratory have been successfully implanted in seven children with spina bifida and shown to function for five years or longer, researchers reported today.s.

China Bans Sales of Human Transplant Organs
Mar 28, 2006 (Associated Press) China’s Health Ministry has explicitly banned sales of human organs in an apparent attempt to clean up the country’s lucrative but laxly regulated transplant business.

UCI Medical Center on Transplant Probation
Mar 25, 2006 (L.A. Times) The national group that oversees organ transplants placed UCI Medical Center on probation Thursday after a scandal that closed its liver transplant program, but stopped short of a more severe penalty that could have closed other transplant services.

Serial Killer Nurse Allowed to Donate Kidney
Mar 18, 2006 (Washington Post) A judge has agreed to allow New Jersey's worst serial killer to donate a kidney, but the donor and his doctors have to meet certain conditions - all operation costs, for example, must be paid by the recipient's insurer.

Man Gets New Artificial Heart Device
Mar 18, 2006 (Associated Press) A new type of artificial heart device, in which the only moving part is suspended in an electromagnetic field and does not touch any other part, has been implanted in a 67-year-old man in Greece. It is smaller, expected to last longer and to cause fewer clotting problems than similar devices.

Plundered Body Parts Implanted in Thousands
Mar 15, 2006 (Associated Press) A macabre scandal in which corpses were plundered for body parts could be even bigger than previously disclosed, with one company alone saying it has distributed thousands of pieces of human tissue that authorities fear could be tainted with disease.

Hospital Is Rebuked in Organ Case
Mar 03, 2006 (L.A. Times) The United Network for Organ Sharing, the organization that regulates organ transplantation, handed its harshest rebuke Thursday to St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles — the first time it has publicly sanctioned one of its members.

Blood in Body Parts Scandal Wasn't Tested
Mar 03, 2006 (MSNBC) A New Jersey biomedical supply house that illegally removed body parts for sale also failed to test the blood of some donors, federal regulators said Thursday.

Platelet Donor Pool Feared to Shrink
Feb 24, 2006 (Associated Press) The federal government wants to overhaul the guidelines for platelet donations to ensure donors are protected. Donation center officials say the changes could have an unintended consequence: as much as a 50 percent reduction in the supply.

Livers From Non-heart Beating Donors Would Boost Organ Supply
Feb 20, 2006 (Science Daily) Liver transplants from non-heart beating donors have the potential to increase the supply of organs by as much as 20%, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal.

Probation Urged for UCI Kidney Transplant Unit
Feb 19, 2006 (L.A. Times) The federal contractor that oversees organ transplants nationally has proposed putting UCI Medical Center's kidney transplant program on probation, after a scandal that forced the closure of the hospital's liver transplant unit in November.

Hospitals May Have Used HIV-Positive Donor Tissue
Feb 10, 2006 (NBC News 10) Police in the Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, said that 17 patients at two different hospitals received bone or body parts that may have been illegally harvested from infected corpses.

UCI Misled Regulators on Transplants, Review Says
Feb 09, 2006 (L.A. Times) A review commissioned by the University of California confirmed allegations that officials at UCI Medical Center had misled regulators about the hospital's now-shuttered liver transplant program, according to a document released Tuesday.

Human-Tissue Broker Is Ordered to Close
Feb 04, 2006 (N.Y. Times) The Food and Drug Administration ordered a New Jersey-based broker of human tissue closed this week amid accusations the company took body parts from cadavers without family permission and did not always screen them for disease.

Ohio Conducts Rare Transplant Procedure
Feb 03, 2006 (Associated Press) In a rare transplant procedure, a 4-month-old boy was given a new heart and set of lungs, and his healthy heart was then donated to a 3-month-old girl, a hospital said Thursday.

Law Annoys Private Cord Banks
Jan 31, 2006 (Wired) President Bush signed legislation last month to establish a national donor bank of umbilical-cord blood to complement the existing bone-marrow registry. The signing was good news to just about everyone but people who run private cord banks.

Minorities Needing Transplant for Liver Cancer Get Short Shrift
Jan 29, 2006 (MedPageToday) Liver transplants for hepatocellular carcinoma, the gold standard for treatment, go disproportionately to the white majority over African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics, investigators reported here today.

Many Kidneys Turned Down at UCI
Jan 24, 2006 (L.A. Times) The transplant program at UCI Medical Center turned down kidneys offered for its patients at an exceptional rate over the last five years, even as 150 people at a time awaited potentially life-saving organs there. Many of the patients on UCI's waiting list would have had a far greater chance of receiving a transplant had they gone to other hospitals, data show.

Biologists Cite Way to Multiply Blood Stem Cells
Jan 23, 2006 (Boston Globe) Biologists announced yesterday a way to dramatically expand populations of blood stem cells, a discovery that could improve bone marrow transplants and make them available to more patients.

UCI's bone marrow program in trouble
Jan 12, 2006 (Associated Press) A University of California hospital that shut down its liver transplant program has similar problems with its bone marrow transplant program, according to state records.

Staff Admits to Coverup at LA Hospital
Dec 29, 2005 (L.A. Times) A climate of "fear and retribution" existed within the now-shuttered liver transplant program at St. Vincent Medical Center, keeping staff members from speaking up about a major breach in national transplantation standards and prompting them to falsify documents as part of a coverup, according to a new federal report.

Bone Brokers Steal, Deal Disease on Black Market
Dec 24, 2005 (CNN) Authorities believe that the body of hundreds of people, including famed British broadcaster Alistair Cooke, were secretly carved up to remove human bone, skin and tendons without required permission. Health officials fear some of the stolen body parts were diseased and could infect patients who received them in skin grafts, dental implants or other orthopedic procedures.

Hospital's Kidney Transplant Death Rate Raises Concerns
Dec 17, 2005 (L.A. Times) Kidney transplant patients at St. Vincent Medical Center have died at a higher-than-expected rate over the last several years, raising questions about the quality of care at one of the nation's oldest and busiest transplant programs.

Landmark Transplant Patients to Meet
Dec 17, 2005 (Associated Press) Next week, the world's first double hand-transplant patient will meet the woman who just had the first partial face transplant. Denis Chatelier, who has lived six years with new hands, says he will offer encouragement that only a fellow transplant patient can give.

As a Face Transplant Heals, Flurries of Questions Arise
Dec 14, 2005 (N.Y. Times) An argument is swirling over the ethics of the groundbreaking surgery and the psychological health of the recipient.

Rejected Organs Return to Haunt UCI
Dec 11, 2005 (L.A. Times) A doctor's memo shows that the transplant program was driven to dysfunction by a fear of failure.

Ethical Concerns Over Face Transplant Grow
Dec 06, 2005 (N.Y. Times) American scientists are concerned that the world's first partial face transplant may have been undertaken without adequate medical and ethical preparation.

Printing Organs on Demand
Dec 05, 2005 (Wired) New techniques could eventually allow scientists to create skin grafts, livers for transplants and other organs on special printers with bio-ink and bio-paper.

Face Transplants Divide Scientists
Dec 02, 2005 (Int'l Herald Tribune/N.Y. Times) Face transplants are among the most disputed frontiers in transplantation science because they are so risky and because no one can predict what a patient who receives a transplant will look like after the surgery.

Woman Has First Face Transplant
Nov 30, 2005 (CNN) Doctors in France say they have performed the first partial face transplant on a woman who suffered extensive injuries in a dog attack.

An Internet Lifeline, in Search of a Kidney
Nov 24, 2005 (N.Y. Times) A rather poignant essay debating a key issue in transplant ethics: who gets an organ and who dies?

Is There a Race Problem with Organ Donors?
Nov 20, 2005 (Newsweek) Ethnic minorities make up 50 percent of the 96,581 people on the transplant list, but white patients receive 63 percent of organs. A growing body of research also shows that black and Hispanic patients face longer delays in getting referred, spend longer on the list and have worse survival rates even after receiving an organ.

Rare Transplant: Mom to Give Son Nerves
Nov 17, 2005 (CNN) Nick Anderson's arm is paralyzed and without feeling in places after a car accident nearly a year ago that also took one of his legs. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital hope a rare nerve implant Thursday from the 19-year-old's mother will help restore use of his left hand.

Hospital masked liver crisis, leading to deaths
Nov 12, 2005 (L.A. Times) For at least four years, UCI Medical Center officials and employees knew that liver transplant candidates were dying while the program turned down a huge portion of donated organs it was offered. But the program continued to enroll patients, market its services and try piecemeal fixes that ultimately failed.

More blacks urged to donate organs
Nov 12, 2005 (Associated Press) Worshippers at black churches in 20 states will be urged this weekend to consider organ donation. The program, Linkages to Life, is aimed at raising awareness about organ donation among blacks, who suffer higher rates of diseases that damage the liver and kidneys.

Life and hope flow from Palestinian boy's death
Nov 12, 2005 (Washington Post) Parents of a slain Palestinian child donate his organs to Israeli patients as a peace overture.

Hospital Refused Organs While Patients Died
Nov 10, 2005 (L.A. Times) Over the last two years, more than 30 people died awaiting liver transplants at UCI Medical Center in Orange as the hospital turned down scores of organs that might have saved them, according to a federal report.

Transplants May Be Easier for HIV Patients
Nov 05, 2005 (Associated Press) Buoyed by a legislative victory in California and a court ruling in Arizona, advocacy groups say they are making significant headway in efforts to ensure that HIV-positive people have the same access as other patients to kidney and liver transplants.

Bone marrow donors risk DNA identity mix-up
Oct 28, 2005 (New Scientist) A clear DNA match is made between semen from a serious sexual assault and a blood sample from a known criminal, yet the criminal in question was in jail when the assault took place. It was only after careful detective work that the mystery was solved: the jailed man had received bone marrow from the actual perpetrator many years earlier.

Laws fail to stop India's organ trade
Oct 24, 2005 (New Scientist Premium) India has a flourishing, and illegal, trade in human organs. And the legislation designed to prevent it is failing. That is because no one feels they benefit from the laws that govern organ transplants.

Deception Behind Liver-Transplant Switch Proved to Be Fatal
Oct 14, 2005 (L.A. Times)

A liver transplant candidate was misled about his prospects for a transplant, missed out when an organ became available, and died less than a year later, according to a published report.

Fate Reveals Fallen Officer's Gift
Oct 11, 2005 (Washington Post) For two families in distress, the intersection of life and death began with a single phone call.

West Nile Reported in Organ Recipients
Oct 06, 2005 (Associated Press) Three organ transplant patients recently were infected with West Nile virus from a common donor - the second such report of infection from the virus through organ donation

Kidney swap program posts high success rat
Oct 04, 2005 (Associated Press) Researchers are reporting a high success rate for a novel kidney-swap program that proponents say could someday ease the nation’s shortage of transplant organs.

Mighty Mice Regrow Organs
Sep 29, 2005 (Wired) A strain of genetically altered rodents can grow new skin, toes, tails and even organs. Are humans next?

Hospital Halts Organ Transplant Program
Sep 27, 2005 (L.A. Times)

Search for Transplant Organs Becomes a Web Free-for-All
Sep 23, 2005 (Washington Post) An increasing number of patients needing transplants are mounting personal online searches in their often desperate hunt for a compatible donor.

Surgeon hopes new face gives new outlook
Sep 18, 2005 (CNN) In the next few weeks, five men and seven women will visit the Cleveland Clinic to interview for the chance to have a radical operation, the world's first face transplant.

Duped cells may prevent transplant rejection
Sep 13, 2005 (New Scientist) Fooling the human immune system into accepting foreign transplant tissue as its own may be the key to future stem cell and organ transplants.

Know risks before saying OK to surgery
Jul 31, 2005 (Boston Globe)

New law ensures family members can't reverse organ donor's decision
Jun 28, 2005 (AP) A person's decision to become an organ donor will be binding, even if family members object, under a new law signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Controversial, even on the face of it
Jun 24, 2005 (Chicago Tribune) Ethicists might find the idea unacceptable, but at least two medical centers in the United States are finalizing plans for a controversial new procedure: a face transplant.

Inmate's Organ Donor Wish Poses Quandary
Jun 08, 2005 (Wired) A death row inmate's request that his execution next week be delayed so he can be an organ donor for his ailing sister isn't the first time a condemned man has tried to donate an organ. But the issue of a condemned inmate donating an organ does raise ethical concerns.

New England Transplant Centers Offering Imperfect Organs
Jun 06, 2005 (AP) Gloria Daise was stunned last year to learn that the wait for a transplant kidney averaged five to six years. But in April, a surgeon gave her another option: a shorter wait if she accepted a less-than-perfect organ.

Ethics of death-row organ donation questioned
May 31, 2005 (AP) A death-row inmate’s request that his execution next week be delayed so he can be an organ donor for his ailing sister isn’t the first time a condemned man has tried to donate an organ.

Future not always certain for living donors
May 16, 2005 (AP) Healthy people who donate organs enter a world of unknowns, so much so that even the medical community doesn't know the risks, according to a newspaper's copyright story.

Idea of paying donors for transplants gains momentum
May 12, 2005 (Post-Dispatch) There is only one country in the world where it's legal now, but the subject comes up at nearly every major transplant conference. "After all, currently everyone but the donor already benefits financially from the transplant (physicians, coordinators, hospitals, recipients)," Dr. Arthur Matas said in a paper published this year.

Report sheds light on absence of data about living donors
May 10, 2005 (AP) Healthy people who donate organs enter a world of unknowns, so much so that even the medical community doesn’t know the risks, according to a newspaper’s copyright story.

Man Who Advertised for Liver Dies
Apr 27, 2005 (AP) A Houston man who got a new liver by advertising on a billboard died eight months after the transplant.

Future organ donors vow to share, with each other
Apr 20, 2005 (DesMoines Register) More than 87,000 American patients are waiting for someone to donate a heart, a kidney or another organ that could save their lives. But countless usable organs are being buried or cremated because people declined to sign donor cards, and when they died, their grieving families couldn't bear to give away any part of their bodies.

Feds may stiffen living donor rules
Apr 12, 2005 (AP) Hospitals would be required to tell prospective living organ donors of the risks of donating a kidney or a slice of liver under proposed government rules that seek to protect those donors and ensure quality care at transplant centers.

Guidelines proposed to protect living donors
Apr 04, 2005 (Newsday) The federal government has proposed rules aimed at protecting the health of living organ donors. Although that's a step forward, it doesn't go far enough, according to the widow of a liver donor who died in a high-profile New York case.

Tucson woman 3rd to find donor online
Mar 01, 2005 (Tucson Citizen) Jackie Stopani doesn't own a computer, but that didn't stop her from entering the computer age in a big way. On March 1, the 64-year-old grandmother will become the third person nationwide to get a kidney from a person met on a commercial Web site that matches people needing organs with potential donors.

Tax deduction for organ donor
Feb 14, 2005 (Arkansas News) A House panel enthusiastically endorsed a bill Tuesday that would allow living organ donors to deduct up to $10,000 from their Arkansas taxes at least once in their lifetime.

Animal-to-human transplant submissions calle
Feb 01, 2005 (Stuff - NZ) A number of xenotransplantation or animal-to-human transplantation procedures...potentially offer treatment for serious conditions such as kidney or liver failure and diabetes," Jill White, chairwoman of the Government adviser on biotechnology, said today.

Medicare to cover cardiac device
Jan 20, 2005 (MSNBC) The government has decided to expand its coverage for surgically implanted heart-shocking devices for people with weakened hearts, in what could be the most expensive single decision in Medicare's history, federal officials said yesterday.

The Ultimate Gift
Dec 21, 2004 (New York Times) When Robert Phillips, a truck driver in Virginia, was dying of kidney failure in 1963, his younger sister, Ruth, read in a newspaper about a mother-to-son kidney transplant in Denver.

Organ donor law gets first test
Dec 15, 2004 (Maine Today) A lawsuit alleging that a dead man's brain was taken without his family's permission appears to be the first case under a 35-year-old Maine law that sets the rules for organ donation.

UNOS opposes transplant appeals
Nov 22, 2004 (TIMES-DISPATCH) The organization running the nation's transplant network said yesterday that patients who solicit organs for themselves from unfamiliar donor families undermine the system and the public's trust.

Organ network moves to end 'cutting in line'
Nov 22, 2004 (Houston Chronicle) The case of a Houston man who advertised for a new liver has prompted the United Network for Organ Sharing to recommend that hospitals discourage patients from soliciting organs and, if possible, to refuse to perform such transplants.

Ohio Clinic Plans Human Face Transplant
Nov 01, 2004 (Newsday) The Cleveland Clinic says it is the first institution to receive review board approval of human facial transplant for someone severely disfigured by burns or disease.

Online organ match raises ethical concerns
Oct 27, 2004 (USA Today) The nation's organ transplant officials are scrambling to try to develop rules to guide surgeons and hospitals coping with a new twist: organ donors and recipients who find each other on the Internet.

Internet kidney op gets go-ahead
Oct 21, 2004 (BBC News) A hospital in Denver originally postponed the operation amid worries that the recipient might have paid the donor for his organ.

States explore tax breaks to benefit organ donation
Oct 20, 2004 (CS Monitor) The Wisconsin law, passed just last year, has already set a dozen similar bills in motion in other states. The approach is an attempt to tread ethically controversial ground between the high unmet demand for organs and caution over creating a financial market for them.

Death ruling chills transplant community
Oct 18, 2004 (AMNews) It is generally accepted that the actions of one person can sometimes make a difference in the world, but people involved in organ donations are hoping that the recent actions of a county coroner in rural Colorado won't have such an impact.

A Stranger in the Mirror
Oct 11, 2004 (New York Times) This year is the 50th anniversary of the first successful human organ transplant. Over the last half-century, the improved understanding of how to prevent the body's immune system from rejecting foreign tissue has turned what began as an experiment into a routine procedure. Today, bone and bowel, heart and hand are replaceable.

Death Puts Spotlight on a Doc and Regulators
Oct 06, 2004 (New York Times) Katherine Bibeau came here in March, to a red-brick doctor's office tucked between a furniture store and a steel factory, looking to slow her physical decline from multiple sclerosis.

The Kidney Swap: Adventures in Saving Lives
Oct 05, 2004 (New York Times) His eyes on a video monitor that displayed the inside of Suzanne DeCample's abdomen, Dr. Lloyd Ratner gently guided a hollow rod through an incision below her navel. Watching his progress on the monitor, he advanced the tool toward her left kidney and then passed another instrument, tipped with a plastic bag, through the rod.

Nepal's trade of doom
Sep 22, 2004 (BBC News) Kidney donation in Nepal is illegal, except from a close relative. But middlemen have persuaded impoverished villagers to sell a kidney for cash or land.

Successful organ-donor plea prompts copycats
Sep 17, 2004 (Houston Chronicle) Everet Barrington was angry when Houston cancer patient Todd Krampitz received a liver transplant in August, just a week after making a public plea for an organ with billboards and a Web site.

Doctors prepared to do face transplant
Sep 17, 2004 (The Courier-Journal) Even as ethicists and others raise concerns, a team of doctors from Louisville and the Netherlands says it is ready to perform a face transplant.

When love isn't enough
Sep 07, 2004 (Boston Globe) By the end, Jennifer Jackson had more seniority at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital than some of the people who took care of her, celebrating holidays, birthdays, and even high school graduation while tethered to an oxygen tank as she waited for a lung transplant. For 18 months, Jackson lived on the ninth floor of this hospital 200 miles from home, never giving up hope that she would get her "miracle."

New Rules on Sperm Donations by Gays
May 20, 2004 (New York Times) Men who acknowledge having had homosexual sex within the previous five years will not be allowed to make anonymous sperm donations under new rules that the Food and Drug Administration is expected to announce today.