it is much easier to donate tissue and eyes (corneas) than it is organs. most people are not candidates to donate organs when they die, as most deaths are cardiac deaths and organ donation requires a brain death.
i got to work with the donor network a few times since we keep the patient's stable for them before harvesting. it's really an awesome and interesting process, but it can be hard on families because they see the heartbeat, the blood pressure, and it just looks like a coma.
Maybe somebody can answer this if you get say a new liver can you find out who you got it from or is that confidential?
Gooble goble gooble goble one of us one of us. t(-_-)t
https://www.icij.org/investigations/...ns-corruption/
I remember the Mastromarino case he did organ harvesting.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates...dies-business/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates...odies-science/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates...dies-rathburn/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates...a-bodies-cody/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates...odies-funeral/
Here are some reuters updates on the Body Donor business.
I cant remember where I read it, but there are opt out countries. The particular one I read about had a stipulation that if you opt out as a donor, and end up needing an organ, you're on the bottom of the transplant list. I think it's an amazing idea, but I'm sure it wouldn't go over well in the US. The false idea of "they won't save me if I'm a donor" is way too rampant.
https://m.theepochtimes.com/in-uk-pa...g_2497225.html
Update on organ harvesting.
https://www.dailytrust.com.ng/police...s-in-kogi.html
Now a Nigerian Mob here has been accused of stealing organs from the victims.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-...cking/10579738
The criminal masterminds behind the illegal trade of human body parts raked in $2.3 billion around the globe last year.
About 12,000 organs were sold on the black market, and while the majority of those exchanges involved kidneys, 654 hearts and 2,615 livers were sold for up to $394,000 each.
That illegal trade will continue to grow if the Australian Government does not do more to deter human organ trafficking, according to a unanimous report handed down by a parliamentary committee.
About 1,400 Australians are currently waiting for an organ transplant, while a further 11,000 are on kidney dialysis, and the committee found if the government failed to address the gap between the number of people requiring organ transplants and the limited supply of freely donated organs, the black market would keep flourishing
The chairman of the Human Rights Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, told Parliament the average waiting time for a kidney in Australia was three years.
"Desperate people often facing certain death without a transplant may travel far from their own countries to places such as Egypt, the Philippines or Pakistan, paying tens of thousands of dollars or more, for an organ transplant, where the donor is most likely in dire financial straits, possibly exploited, and unable to give free and informed consent to donation," Mr Andrews said.
Cutting down demand
The committee's report recommended the Australian Government pursue a range of measures to strengthen its involvement in international efforts to combat human organ trafficking, collect data on Australians involved in illegal organ trafficking overseas and also tighten criminal laws around organ harvesting.
It also concluded the Government should seek to improve organ-donation rates through ongoing funding of programs, education awareness campaigns, and the investigation of other international programs ? such as opt-out organ donation.
Mr Andrews said the committee heard from many people who argued protections against the practice needed to be strengthened.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/austra...t_2729557.html
The Australian government needs to do more to combat organ trafficking and transplant tourism crimes, a report from a parliamentary inquiry has recommended.
At least 12,000 organs were sold on the black market in 2017—a trade that is worth up to A$2.3 billion ($1.7 billion) globally each year.
The report, released by the human rights sub-committee into human organ trafficking and organ transplant tourism on Dec. 3, made 12 recommendations to prevent the illegal trade of human organs in Australia and overseas.
The inquiry—which arose from a series of private briefings with the Falun Dafa Association of Australia, former Canadian secretary of state for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour, and human rights lawyer David Matas—considered whether the country’s organ trafficking laws should be extended to prohibit citizens from travelling overseas for unethical transplants and whether Australia should accede to the 2014 Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs.
According to in-depth investigations by Kilgour and Matas, China has been harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience on a mass scale—mainly Falun Dafa adherents—fuelling a multi-billion-dollar business that benefits CCP officials. Falun Dafa, or Falun Gong, is a traditional spiritual meditation practice that is heavily persecuted in China.
During the inquiry that began last year, experts gave evidence of cases of transplant abuse that have been reportedly occurring in China as well as across the Asia-Pacific region. Experts said that organs used in transplants in China were allegedly sourced from political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, and executed prisoners.
The committee said they were not in the position to decide on the truth of the allegations against the Chinese state but were “inclined to conclude that organ trafficking has occurred in China and may continue to occur, albeit on a lesser scale.” Given the Chinese Embassy’s silence on the allegations, the sub-committee recommended that the Australian government monitor and express concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) transplantation practices.
“The onus is on Chinese authorities to demonstrate to the world that they are not overseeing or permitting the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners without their knowledge and free consent. In the absence of such a demonstration … the world is entitled to question assertions of claims to the contrary,” the report stated.
Australia Should Sign Convention
Meanwhile, the report also recommended that Australia should accede to the 2014 Council of Europe Convention—a treaty that has governments criminalise certain forms of organ transplantation, including where the donor is not freely consenting, or where the donor or a third party receives financial gain from the transaction.
“Australia has an obligation to demonstrate leadership as a notable organ-importing jurisdiction, and now has the opportunity to do so through accession to the convention,” it said.
Madeleine Bridgett, a member of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, previously told the inquiry in June that Australia could play a leading role in the Asia-Pacific region “in ensuring all Australians are sourcing organs legally and ethically.”
To date, 23 nations have signed the convention, while Albania, the Czech Republic, Malta, Norway, and Moldova have also ratified the treaty.
Australian Laws Not Strong Enough
A spokeswoman for NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge told The Epoch Times that the recommendations from the report are a “clear recognition” that New South Wales (NSW) and Australian laws are not currently strong enough to deter Australians from participating in the unethical sourcing of human organs while overseas.
“I think the report writers have rightly not accepted the position that what is being done [by China] is sufficient,” she said. “What we are calling for [the federal government] to do is to take immediate action on it.”
Shoebridge is seeking to pass a bill in the NSW Parliament that will “at the very least” will prohibit members of the NSW community going overseas and buying illegally harvested organs.
The bill includes amendments to the state’s Human Tissue Act 1983 requiring medical professionals to report to the NSW Secretary of Health when they believe that one of their patients has received an organ from a non-consenting donor.
With the NSW government elections fast approaching in March, Shoebridge’s office said, “We’ll will be looking for both parties to support the moves we’ve made in NSW.”
Real Bodies Exhibition Sydney 2018
Real Bodies: The Exhibition opened to the public in Sydney, Australia, on April 14, 2018, with protestors gathering out the front of the venue to voice their concerns over the sourcing of the real human corpses on display. (Melanie Sun/The Epoch Times)
The report also stated that the controversial Real Bodies exhibition is illustrative of an apparent gap in Australia’s current legislation.
The exhibition of 20 plastinated human bodies and 200 plastinated body parts was on display to the paying public at Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter for six months despite serious ethical concerns that the exhibitor Imagine Exhibitions had no consent documents or identification papers to confirm the origin of the bodies.
In a statement to Newscorp, president of Imagine Exhibitions Tom Zaller, said he had been assured by his business partner, Dr. Sui Hongjin, that the cadavers were “legally donated,” unclaimed bodies sourced from the city morgue in Dalian, China, from individuals who had died from “natural causes.”
But Kilgour told News.Com.Au that he “worried greatly that none of what is claimed for the exhibits is correct,” based on what he had uncovered in his extensive research.
Various reports also corroborate Kilgour’s concerns. The sub-committee cited a 2004 Der Spiegel report mentioning that multiple human cadavers sourced from Sui between 2000 and 2004 were observed to have bullet holes in their skulls. Sui had also stated in email correspondence dated Dec. 29, 2001, that he had obtained two “very fresh” cadavers which had just been shot and had their livers removed, allegedly for transplantation purposes.
Shoebridge said that when the Real Bodies exhibition opened in NSW, “we found that the NSW Police were unable to intervene because the law did not provide clear enough guidance that this was an offence under NSW law,” according to statement.
Given the strong assertions made in the sub-committee’s report, Shoebridge said on Dec. 4, “We must urgently implement the recommendations of this report to ensure any bodies brought into this country for display have fully and freely consented.”
Demand Driving Black Market
The report concluded that the gap between the number of people who needed an organ and the number of organs available is driving demand in the illegal trade of human organs.
The committee’s chair, Liberal MP Kevin Andrews, said that when patients become desperate, they may turn to transplant tourism.
“This practice gives hope to the desperate but comes with serious medical risk both for the donor and the organ reciprocates and often exploits the poorest and most vulnerable in communities,” he said in a statement.
In Australia, more than 1,400 people are waiting for an organ, while a further 11,000 are on kidney dialysis.
The report recommended that in order to address the shortfall, the federal government should improve organ donation rates through a number of measures like funding and awareness campaigns. But policy and legislative measures should be strengthened to prevent citizens from obtaining illegal transplants in Australia or overseas.
The government will have three months as set by the Senate to respond to the recommendations in the report.
Does KS have us all on mute? Does KS ever read old threads before bumping them with random, barely related articles?
These are the questions we ask ourselves in utter bewilderment on a daily basis
Wow big update on the Holiday Organ Spectacular Concert
https://www.broadwayworld.com/los-an...CULAR-20181205
https://abc7chicago.com/health/texas...ssion/5147208/
LUBBOCK. Texas -- A grandmother in Lubbock says she has a lot of questions after she found out doctors may have harvested her 10-year-old granddaughter's organs without permission.
Rebecca Villarreall says that four days after her granddaughter Elaina Castilleja died, a memo was sent to the doctor who would perform Elaina's autopsy, giving instructions to harvest her organs.
The letter, signed by chief medical examiner Dr. Sam Andrews, instructs the doctor to preserve the brain, but remove the cervical spine, eyes, lungs and more.
"We did not sign up for this. I knew she had to have an autopsy but this is remove her, remove this. She was 10 years old," Villarreall told KLBK.
Villarreall adopted Elaina when she was one year old. Elaina suffered most of her life from the effects of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Villarreall said she was told that because of the syndrome, an autopsy needed to be done, but she never agreed to organs being harvested.
"They literally disassembled my child. She wasn't a manufactured home. She wasn't a toy. She wasn't a doll. She was a person," Villarreall said.
It's unknown why Dr. Andrews and the pathology labs requested the organs to be taken out or whether the doctor followed through on those instructions.
"Who are these monsters? These are monsters. Who are these people? I didn't sign no papers. I didn't sign for them to disassemble," Villarreall said.
In a situation like this, experts say that the law is complicated. It usually comes down to a question of ethics.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019...an-tourism-ban
An update UK is in talks to ban organ harvesting tourism to China.
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavi...i6q-story.html
Surgeons in Chicago for the first time have performed a double lung transplant using organs donated by a patient who previously had COVID-19.
The 10-hour, life-saving procedure occurred at North Western Medicine in February, the health care provider revealed in a statement on Friday. The recipient, an Illinois healthcare worker in his 60s, was diagnosed with coronavirus in in May 2020, growing sicker and sicker until he was ultimately placed on a ventilator.
After spending a week on the transplant list, doctors decided the man could no longer wait and elected to use the lungs of a former COVID-19 patient. The organ donor, who only experienced minor symptoms linked to the fast spreading illness, had made a full recovery by the time of their unrelated, accidental death.
'This is a milestone for lung transplantation,' says Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program, who performed the procedure.
'To date, 30 million Americans have had COVID-19 and many of them are registered organ donors. If we say 'no' to them just because they had COVID-19 in the past, we will drastically reduce the donor pool and there's already a big supply and demand gap.'
Since the global pandemic emerged late last year, Northwestern Medicine surgeons have completed 14 double-lung transplants on COVID-19 survivors ' more than any other hospital in the world. Health experts have expressed concern that even those who have recovered from the virus could face long term effects, which could increase the need for organ donations moving forward.
'We will have a massive problem on our hands if Americans can't donate their organs after having a mild to moderate case of COVID-19,' Bharat added.
WOW! This is amazing. Good for his family, letting someone go isn't easy under any circumstances, but bless them for carrying out his wishes AND facilitating a giant step for medicine in the process.
Presumably, his healthy kidneys were donated and the pig kidneys were put in their place? The article isn't clear about that. I wonder if he donated any other organs in the end.
You are talking to a woman who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom and chuckled at catastrophe.
...Collector of Chairs. Reader of Books. Hater of Nutmeg...
I've donated my brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation - after I'm finished with it naturally!
These folks are doing amazing research and they need lots of donor brains (concussed and otherwise) to keep doing it. When I read their study and saw the photographs of Aaron Hernandez's brain, I wanted to cry. His brain looked like a wilted, rotten cauliflower. If you ever wonder why [some] football players and professional athletes make millions.... that's why - and it's still not enough to compensate for destroying the single most important organ in your body.
https://concussionfoundation.org/get...earch-registry
I worry about my son. Growing up, he was an Adventurer par excellence and suffered eight diagnosed concussions between the ages of 5-18 years (mostly sports-related), and a ninth when he was 24 (auto accident). After he became a father, he stopped extreme sports, but he's still very active. He is forty-three now, and over the past few years, has begun to show symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Of course, it can't be diagnosed without a brain autopsy, but his doctor is concerned about the possibility based on his documented history of concussions. When he was young, we didn't know anything about the brain. We thought brain damage could never be reversed because we didn't understand the neuro-plasticity of the brain. If I knew then, what I know now, I would never have allowed him to start playing competitive contact sports at the age of six. Football, soccer, wrestling.... for 19 years, this guy was banging his head around on a weekly basis since he was SIX YEARS OLD! Ugh, it sickens me to think about it.
You are talking to a woman who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom and chuckled at catastrophe.
...Collector of Chairs. Reader of Books. Hater of Nutmeg...
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