Word: donor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...strict enough and intimates that a factor may be the need for healthy organs for transplants. To buttress the show's argument, the producers described the experiences of five American patients who were thought dead but who survived. Only one was ever considered as a possible organ donor. Two were women who had taken drug overdoses, one was a premature infant, another was a man paralyzed by a muscle-relaxing agent. The most sensational case was that of a man who lost consciousness after suffering a heart attack. He was saved only when the transplant surgeon, who was about...
...medical journals, they claim, with some justice, that the show distorted facts. They point out that brain-death codes were set up not to ease transplants but to spare families draining bedside vigils. Says Jennett: "Only one in eight or nine patients taken off respirators ever becomes a donor...
...Stanford doctors, who do two dozen transplants a year, half the world total, credit several developments. New methods of handling organs have increased the availability of donor hearts; so has increasing acceptance of the concept of "brain death," which declares a person dead when the brain is not functioning even though the heart beats on. Also, recipients are chosen more carefully. The ideal candidate is under age 50, healthy aside from heart disease, optimistic, stable and has a supportive family...
...committee's programs receive about $10,000 annually, half from the president's discretionary "venture" fund and half from an anonymous donor. Since the "venture" fund is meant for only new projects, other sources of funding should be found, Homans said...
Snell's and Dausset's discoveries have led to better matching of donor organs with recipients. Further, since the HLA molecules give everyone except identical twins a unique biochemical profile, HLA "typing" has become a major tool in forensic medicine. It has helped identify rapists through semen stains, and in one paternity case it showed that a pair of fraternal twins were sired by different fathers. Researchers have found that certain HLA groupings are associated with particular diseases, including multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Through HLA typing, it may one day be possible to tell an individual what...