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Soldier dies after receiving smoker's lungs in transplant

jamesrage

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I think if this happened in the US there would be a lawsuit.

Soldier dies after receiving smoker's lungs in transplant - CNN.com

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A leading UK hospital has defended its practice of using organs donated by smokers after the death of a soldier who received the cancerous lungs of a heavy smoker.

Corporal Matthew Millington, 31, died at his home in 2008, less than a year after receiving a transplant that was supposed to save his life at Papworth Hospital -- the UK's largest specialist cardiothoracic hospital, in Cambridgeshire, east England.

Papworth Hospital released a statement saying using donor lungs from smokers was not "unusual."

The statement added that the hospital had no option but to use lungs from smokers as "the number of lung transplants carried out would have been significantly lower," if they didn't.
 
During the same period 84 people died on the waiting list. If we had a policy that said we did not use the lungs of those who had smoked, then the number of lung transplants carried out would have been significantly lower.

Unfortunate, but at the same time we have to ask if he would have lived even to that point without the transplant. It seems to me that more lives have been saved by using organs such as those than have been lost.

Any word on whether the patient knew the lungs were from a smoking donor?
 
I can't wait for government run health care. It's gonna be just great, I tell ya.
 
I think that cases like these demonstrate the need for an organ sale market. Surely someone would want the smoker's lungs, and they could probably get them at a discount price. And those who wanted to hold out for a non-smoker's lungs could do so as well.

I think that would be much better than the current system of some people randomly getting good donated lungs, some people randomly getting bad donated lungs, and some people not getting new lungs at all because they die before they reach the top of the waiting list.
 
I think that cases like these demonstrate the need for an organ sale market. Surely someone would want the smoker's lungs, and they could probably get them at a discount price. And those who wanted to hold out for a non-smoker's lungs could do so as well.

I think that would be much better than the current system of some people randomly getting good donated lungs, some people randomly getting bad donated lungs, and some people not getting new lungs at all because they die before they reach the top of the waiting list.

Let's put organs up for sale to the highest bidder. That'll work just fine.
 
Let's put organs up for sale to the highest bidder. That'll work just fine.

Instead of making juvenile sarcastic comments that clearly display your lack of intellect, perhaps you'd care to explain what problems you foresee with such a system so that I can address them.
 
Instead of making juvenile sarcastic comments that clearly display your lack of intellect, perhaps you'd care to explain what problems you foresee with such a system so that I can address them.

The world's not perfect, life isn't certain and death is inevitable.

I can't get over how people act as if, somehow, they're going to get out of here alive. People should spend less time trying to stop the inevitable. That's the biggest problem that I see.
 
Instead of making juvenile sarcastic comments that clearly display your lack of intellect, perhaps you'd care to explain what problems you foresee with such a system so that I can address them.

This assumes that he's able to recognize a non-juvenile, sarcastic comment.
 
I've seen a number of cadavers broken down for parts, and it always seemed to me that they got rejected very easily. I cant imagine a surgeon transplanting sooty lungs.

Oh well, at least it was "free" health care, that makes it all right.
 
I think creating a market for organs is an horrifying idea. It will invetabely lead to some monstruosities like organ harvesting in poor countries, transplant only to the few richest people, corruption/black market, etc..

This is already happening and would only get worse.

The system described is of course not perfect, but the only applicable when the demand far exceeds the offer.

The ethical implications of officializing a market for organs are scary, to say the least...
 
I think creating a market for organs is an horrifying idea. It will invetabely lead to some monstruosities like organ harvesting in poor countries, transplant only to the few richest people, corruption/black market, etc..

This is already happening and would only get worse.

The system described is of course not perfect, but the only applicable when the demand far exceeds the offer.

The ethical implications of officializing a market for organs are scary, to say the least...
So, you don't believe that people's organs are private property, then?
 
The world's not perfect, life isn't certain and death is inevitable
:damn I wish I was a thought provokingly perceptive as you are:respekt::respekt:
 
So, you don't believe that people's organs are private property, then?


Well you can separate the problem in 2 categories:

Ante mortem: well you could say, in a weird sort of way that people's organs are their private property, but it cannot be traded in any form. It can be given eventually, but you cannot reduce an organ to an simple object that can be traded.

post mortem: definately no because 1) they don't care anymore and 2) a human being, even after death and in part, is not a good. If you consider that a person's organs are his property, would it be legated after death? "Great! my hubby his dead! now I herited all his body parts and will make a ton of money selling it all! Even better, he was in good health! now I'm rich! :shock:"


Brrrr
 
We need congressional brain transplants
 
ebay!!!!!!
Erica,Apst has allready placed his organ for sale on ebay, its in the river fishing bait section, bids start at 5 cents, buy it now is 3 cents, with free p&p.
 
I think creating a market for organs is an horrifying idea. It will invetabely lead to some monstruosities like organ harvesting in poor countries, transplant only to the few richest people, corruption/black market, etc..

This is already happening and would only get worse.

The system described is of course not perfect, but the only applicable when the demand far exceeds the offer.

The ethical implications of officializing a market for organs are scary, to say the least...

There are ways to avoid those problems. An organ market could be accompanied with laws mandating that the organs only come from within the country, and are taken only from deceased people and/or people mentally competent to choose to sell them.
 
Erica,Apst has allready placed his organ for sale on ebay, its in the river fishing bait section, bids start at 5 cents, buy it now is 3 cents, with free p&p.

No, it's in the jig section...lol
 
Well you can separate the problem in 2 categories:

Ante mortem: well you could say, in a weird sort of way that people's organs are their private property, but it cannot be traded in any form. It can be given eventually, but you cannot reduce an organ to an simple object that can be traded.

post mortem: definately no because 1) they don't care anymore and 2) a human being, even after death and in part, is not a good. If you consider that a person's organs are his property, would it be legated after death? "Great! my hubby his dead! now I herited all his body parts and will make a ton of money selling it all! Even better, he was in good health! now I'm rich! :shock:"


Brrrr
It has been said that the proof of ownership of anything, is the ability to legitimately sell it.

So if one cannot sell one's organs, no matter whether such an act is wise, then one does not own one's flesh. By definition therefore one is a slave.

In your second example, I see this as just one more way in which a loving spouse might provide for his surviving mate. How is this worse than the counter example of " Too bad, my hubby's dead, now I can spend a fortune pickling his corpse, putting it in a fancy box, and burying it at a cost likley to put me in poverty."
 
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Organ shortages can be resolved with mandated donation laws, and further funding put into stem cell research for organ replacement labs.

Organs are private property. They're yours until you die as long as they remain in your body, then what happens to your corpse falls to next of kin if you didn't leave behind a will. In most of the Western world, you can indicate on your driver's license that you want organs donated. This is your post-mortem consent. Not enough people are doing it though.

I would be against an organ market. What I'd be in favor of would be age restrictions, and those are pretty much already in place. Old people should not be getting replacement organs. Everyone else will get them on a first come, first serve basis.
 
Organ shortages can be resolved with mandated donation laws, and further funding put into stem cell research for organ replacement labs.



That would be unconstitutional.
 
Organ shortages can be resolved with mandated donation laws, and further funding put into stem cell research for organ replacement labs.

Organs are private property. They're yours until you die as long as they remain in your body, then what happens to your corpse falls to next of kin if you didn't leave behind a will. In most of the Western world, you can indicate on your driver's license that you want organs donated. This is your post-mortem consent. Not enough people are doing it though.

I would be against an organ market. What I'd be in favor of would be age restrictions, and those are pretty much already in place. Old people should not be getting replacement organs. Everyone else will get them on a first come, first serve basis.

I don't have a problem with presumed consent laws...but I still think a market is necessary. It would at least provide some basis (money) for who needs which organs the most. As it stands now, it's a crapshoot. You get on the waiting list, and when it's your turn you get your organ, whether there's someone who needs it more than you or not. And there's also problems like this story. What if you get a smoker's lungs? Under the current system, you're out of luck. But if there was a market, you could probably get the smoker's lungs at a deep discount if that's what you wanted...and if you wanted better lungs, you wouldn't have to worry about it being random.

If there is one sure way to eliminate a shortage or surplus, it's to introduce market forces to the equation.
 
One issue I can see with creating a market for organs is that not all organs are interchangeable. That is, you don't need just anyone's lungs. You need compatible lungs. So the system needs to have some method to ensure that people can avoid buying organs that they cannot use. Due to the rarity of certain variations of the possible compatibilities (just like blood types) there would need to be something that allowed organs of type X Y & Z to be priced different than organ types A B & C. There would also be the problem of people buying the wrong organ because they couldn't make sense of all the data or didn't do their research, just like people buying auto parts often buy something for the wrong year or engine. So there would probably be fraud where a doctor tells someone who needs a cheap version of an organ that they need a more expensive version and pockets the money, as well as people selling cheap organs as more expensive variants.

I do believe that these problems could all be sorted out somehow, but whether it's worth it from a cost/benefit analysis & whether the resulting system is really better than the current system I'd have to be convinced of.
 
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