This is a very long and well written article. One fact I'd like to highlight is that the liver can regrow to the same size quite quickly if you choose to be a living liver donor.
Surgeons had long learned sewing skills from their mothers, sisters, and wives. But in 1901, surgical trainee Alexis Carrel’s mother sent him to someone more gifted, Marie-Ann Leroudier, embroideress of Paris’s high society
I'm curious how important agility with hands are for modern surgeons compared to anatomy and medical knowledge in general. What makes a "great surgeon" today?
I am pretty squeamish around blood (even reading about it...), but this piece was so well written and engrossing and impactful that I made it all the way through in one shot. I had no idea that the bovie instrument (and broadly the entire field of electrosurgery [1]) was even a thing; I assumed it was anll still scalpels and such.
An incredible piece highlighting something people should know more about; thanks for posting this!
The part everyone leaves out is that the entire operation will contribute to the estates of every participant but one: the person who grew the organ. And, in fact, you will find that median donor estate is far lower than that of every other participant: the nurses, the OPO employees, the surgical team. They have the rarest part. They get nothing. And they’re poorer.
Matthew 25:29 comes to mind
> For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
> Sir Roy Yorke Calne FRS FRCS (30 December 1930 – 6 January 2024) was a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. He was part of the team that performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantation in 1987, the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992 and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney cluster transplantation in 1994.
Excellent article. However, I do feel it is missing a more macabre side of the organ donation market in the US, especially around premature death categorization, in the below case, using "donation after circulatory death" instead of brain dead.
A good article, although I question why the author is talking about Iran and its organ market, if she's never been there and doesn't talk to anyone about it. Probably more complicated - and obviously exploitive, I mean, it's Iran - than she leads us to believe. Since it's Hacker News, cue the:
- "I'm outraged that death is brain death [or something else from the medical establishment] and not [some other crank folk definition]"
- "We should be able to pay for livers!" has never considered that he or his extended family could have been poor enough to be exploited by such a world
- "There's no organ exploitation in Asia" despite donation rates being so low and transplants being so high, the organs must be coming from somewhere
- "All transplant is exploitative" he says, until he or a family member needs a life-saving organ donation
I don't see how being compensated for giving your organ to someone else is worse than being told you can either give it away for free or not at all.
Imagine if billionaires had to pay the "riff-raff" organ donors to continue living their vain and hollow lives instead of bribing hospitals and public officials to cut in line. If I were old and on my way out the door, this would give me a chance to leave something behind for my wife and kids.
Let's say I have a heart condition or neurodegenerative disease and I'm living on borrowed time. I could make at least a couple hundred thousand selling 1 lobe out of my very healthy liver to a desperate billionaire. Knowing my heart or brain will give out long before my liver, I can accept my fate and die with courage and dignity and as an added bonus, also help my family by profiteering off of the cowardice and selfishness of people like Larry Ellison or Jeff Bezos.
> There are two models for giving organs. The first, common in Europe, relies on “presumed consent.” Unless you explicitly opt out, your healthy organs belong to society, and you need special permission to be buried with them.
A liver transplant kept someone close to me alive for a few more years, enough years to luckily and unexpectedly have a child, who is our magic child. Modern medicine is unbelievable. We live in extraordinary times.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 40.9 ms ] threadI'm curious how important agility with hands are for modern surgeons compared to anatomy and medical knowledge in general. What makes a "great surgeon" today?
An incredible piece highlighting something people should know more about; thanks for posting this!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrosurgery
And the most impressive thing I managed today is to test out a data and schema replication utility...
Matthew 25:29 comes to mind
> For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Calne
> Sir Roy Yorke Calne FRS FRCS (30 December 1930 – 6 January 2024) was a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. He was part of the team that performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantation in 1987, the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992 and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney cluster transplantation in 1994.
MRS. BROWN: 'Ere. What's going on?
MAN: Uh, he's donating his liver, madam.
MR. BROWN: [screaming]
MRS. BROWN: Is this because he took out one of those silly cards?
[0] http://www.montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Meaning_of_Life/9....
https://archive.is/Qq3Qw
- "I'm outraged that death is brain death [or something else from the medical establishment] and not [some other crank folk definition]"
- "We should be able to pay for livers!" has never considered that he or his extended family could have been poor enough to be exploited by such a world
- "There's no organ exploitation in Asia" despite donation rates being so low and transplants being so high, the organs must be coming from somewhere
- "All transplant is exploitative" he says, until he or a family member needs a life-saving organ donation
Imagine if billionaires had to pay the "riff-raff" organ donors to continue living their vain and hollow lives instead of bribing hospitals and public officials to cut in line. If I were old and on my way out the door, this would give me a chance to leave something behind for my wife and kids.
Let's say I have a heart condition or neurodegenerative disease and I'm living on borrowed time. I could make at least a couple hundred thousand selling 1 lobe out of my very healthy liver to a desperate billionaire. Knowing my heart or brain will give out long before my liver, I can accept my fate and die with courage and dignity and as an added bonus, also help my family by profiteering off of the cowardice and selfishness of people like Larry Ellison or Jeff Bezos.
What? Not that i'm aware of.