Use of cattle from country free of mad cow disease means product is safe, experts say, and patients can still donate blood
Bone cows, specially bred in mad cow-free Australia, are being used instead of human donors for dental and medical bone grafts.
While bovine grafts have been tested for spinal fusion, foot reconstructions and to fix skull traumas, the Australian versions are predominantly used in dental work to strengthen degraded jaws before tooth implants.
Continue reading...Kristi Hadfield saved John Cunningham, a military veteran, in 2016 and years later, donated a kidney to his daughter, Molly
A paramedic who once restarted a US military veteran’s heart has now saved the life of that man’s daughter.
Kristi Hadfield’s life-saving heroics in benefit of retired marine John Cunningham and his daughter Molly Cunningham Jones earned a heartwarming narrative feature from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this week, which went viral among social media platforms that aggregate uplifting news stories.
Continue reading...Modern slavery team reveals further allegations of people being trafficked to London for body parts
The Metropolitan police is investigating more cases of organ trafficking in the UK after new victims came forward following the first conviction for the offence under modern slavery laws.
Detectives from Scotland Yard’s modern slavery and child exploitation team have said they are investigating more allegations of people being trafficked for their body parts to London and other areas of the UK.
Continue reading...Researchers have secured £1m to refine method of scoring potential organs by comparing images
Artificial intelligence could help NHS surgeons perform 300 more transplant operations every year, according to British researchers who have designed a new tool to boost the quality of donor organs.
Currently, medical staff must rely on their own assessments of whether an organ may be suitable for transplanting into a patient. It means some organs are picked that ultimately do not prove successful, while others that might be useful can be disregarded.
Continue reading...Medical advocates across the country are now pushing for 1m more transplants with increasing number of patients seeking procedure
Medical advocates across the United States have launched a new push for 1m more organ transplants, after the milestone figure of the 1 millionth transplant in the US was met at the end of last week.
Since the first kidney transplant was performed in 1954, the US has surpassed over 1m transplants. Nevertheless, with more patients seeking the procedure than ever before, the demand for organ donors has grown significantly.
Continue reading...Analysis: As doctors monitor world’s first human recipient of pig heart, safety and ethical concerns remain
The world’s first transplant of a genetically altered pig heart into an ailing human is a landmark for medical science, but the operation, and the approach more broadly, raise substantial safety and ethical concerns.
Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center spent eight hours on Friday evening transplanting the heart from the pig into 57-year-old David Bennett, who had been in hospital for more than a month with terminal heart failure.
Continue reading...UK and international studies show the impact pandemic has had on health services and patients
The number of solid organ transplants fell dramatically around the world between 2019 and 2020, researchers have found, highlighting the widespread impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on health services and patients.
As the pandemic surged, hospitals were forced to delay potentially life-saving organ transplant surgery, because of resources such as intensive care beds being needed for Covid patients and because of concerns including whether it was safe to treat transplant recipients in hospital.
Continue reading...Patient lost both arms in work accident 23 years ago and it took years to find suitable donors for the complex operation
An Icelandic man who got the world’s first double-shoulder-and-arm transplant is recovering well after the operation, two decades after the accident that cost him both limbs, doctors have said.
They said it was still uncertain how much mobility Felix Gretarsson, 48, will recover following the operation earlier this month in the southeastern French city of Lyon.
Continue reading...Week-long storage boosts time organs are usable and distances over which they can be moved
Human livers from organ donors can now be preserved for a week, researchers have revealed, a dramatic improvement on previous techniques, which could only keep the organs usable for a matter of hours.
The technology could boost the number of livers available for transplantation and offer new approaches to treating diseases such as liver cancer.
Continue reading...Forty MPs back effort before inquiry into allegations of forced organ harvesting
UK patients should be banned from travelling to China for transplant surgery, the government has been told, before an inquiry into allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience.
The call has so far been backed by 40 MPs from all parties before the next session of the independent China tribunal, which is investigating claims that detainees are being targeted by the regime. China dismisses the allegations as malicious rumours and insists that it adheres to international medical standards that require organ donations to be made by consent and without any financial charges.
Opening a Westminster Hall debate last week, the DUP MP Jim Shannon urged the UK government to consider imposing an organ tourism ban like those already enacted by Italy, Spain, Israel and Taiwan.
“It is wrong that people should travel from here to China for what is almost a live organ on demand to suit themselves,” Shannon, the MP for Strangford in Northern Ireland, said. “It is hard to take in what that means – it leaves one incredulous.
“It means someone can sit in London or in Newtownards and order an organ to be provided on demand. Within a month they can have the operation.
“We need to control that structurally, as other countries have, not simply because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is necessary to protect UK citizens from unwittingly playing a role in the horrifying suffering of religious or belief groups in China.”
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who was formerly a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, has been taking evidence about alleged mispractices from medical experts, human rights investigators and others.
It will hold a second round of hearings on 6 and 7 April in London. Its final judgment will be published on 13 June. China has been asked to participate but has declined to do so.
In an interim judgment released last December, the tribunal said: “In China forced-organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practised for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims … It is beyond doubt on the evidence presently received that forced harvesting of organs has happened on a substantial scale by state-supported or approved organisations and individuals.”
Among those killed, it has been alleged, are members of religious minorities such as Falun Gong, Tibetans, Uighur Muslims and some Christian sects. In 2014, China announced that it would stop removing organs for transplantation from executed prisoners.
It is not clear how many UK citizens have travelled to China for transplants. Waiting times for operations are said to be far shorter than in the west. One inquiry suggested that a liver transplant could be arranged privately at a Chinese hospital for $100,000.
Fiona Bruce, the Conservative MP for Congleton, who is also leading the campaign for a ban said during the Westminster debate: “Our government could inquire about the numbers of organ removals and their sources … They could reduce demand by banning organ tourism … This is not a case of a few voluntary organ transplants; it is a case of alleged mass killings through forced organ removal, of religious persecution, of grave allegations of crimes against humanity.”
Mark Field, the Foreign Office minister, acknowledged that there was a growing body of research, much of which was “very worrying” but he believed relatively few people in the UK chose to travel to China for organ transplants.
Introducing a travel ban, he said, would be difficult to police since it would be hard to establish whether people had travelled there for that purpose. Field said: “But, it is important that we make them aware that other countries may have poorer medical and ethical safeguards than the UK, and that travelling abroad for treatments, including organ transplants, carries fundamental risks.”
The Chinese embassy told the Guardian: “The Chinese government always follows the World Health Organization’s guiding principles on human organ transplant, and has strengthened its management on organ transplant in recent years. On 21 March 2007, the Chinese state council enacted the regulation on human organ transplant, providing that human organ donation must be done voluntarily and gratis. We hope that the British people will not be misled by rumours.”
It cited article 7 of its regulation on human organ ransplant, which says: “The donation of human organs shall be made under the principle of free will and free of charge. A citizen shall be entitled to donate or not to donate his or her human organ; and any organisation or person shall not force, cheat or entice others into donating their human organs.”
Article 8 of the regulation states: “The citizen donating his or her human organ shall have full competency in civil act … Any organisation or person shall not donate or remove any human organ of a citizen who has disagreed with the donation of any of his or her human organs while alive.”