By Zoe Martina Siegel
According to the Global Industry Analysts (GIA), the number of organ transplant procedures performed globally is projected to reach 148,00 by the year 2020 for a number of reasons, including an aging population and the growing number of terminally ill patients.
Medical and technological advancements have led to organ transplants becoming the preferred treatment for many chronic diseases and have drastically increased the survival rate of terminally ill …

By Andrew Rock
In this interview with The Daily Circuit, Ezekiel Emanuel, Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses questions and considerations that arise when one asks one of the most important bioethical questions: With a scarcity of organs, how does one decide who receives priority?
The current structures in place for dealing with such dilemmas “vary depending upon the organ that’s being transplanted,” explains Dr. …

By Caroline Song
The Hindu, an independent editorial, recently published an article that indicates that cadaveric donations could help alleviate the gap between organ supply and demand. The Hindu correspondent M. Vandhana spoke with Dr. Christopher Barry, a liver transplant surgeon who is currently working with the Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network (MOHAN). According to Dr. Barry, around 90% of organ donations in India come from living donors. Recently, however, in …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
If the Scots vote in favor of independence from the United Kingdom, Scottish patients currently on the waiting list for vital organ transplants might be sent to the back of the line. This would mean increased waiting times for people in need of heart, liver, and lung transplants.
Department of Health officials cautioned that, in the case of Scottish independence, the treatment system would have to be completely overhauled, …

By Zoe Martina Siegel
In June 2011, Turkish doctor Yusuf Sonmez and his associate Moshe Harel were accused of trafficking in persons and organized crime by the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo. Operating out of Medicus clinic in Pristina, Dr. Sonmez, Harel, and other key players harvested and sold human kidneys. The buyers, often Israelis, usually paid more than 70,000 euro for a kidney. The organs were harvested from poor people …

By Andrew Rock
Last month, Cambodian police shut down an organ trafficking ring that was operating out of a Cambodian military hospital. Nine people were arrested, including the hospital director, the deputy director, three Chinese-Vietnamese nationals, and a Chinese physician and professor who had worked as the group’s consultant.
In China, state-sanctioned organ harvesting is commonplace. Prisoners on death row and prisoners of conscience are frequently killed for their organs. But the …

By Zoe Martina Siegel
There is a push for greater knowledge regarding organ transplants and donation in Saudi Arabia. Abdul Aziz Al-Turki, the chairman of Ethar, reminded the public of how important these issues are: “A single brain-dead patient can save the lives of nine other patients who are in dire need of different vital organs.”
Prince Saudbin Naif, the Eastern Province Governor,also supports this awareness campaign. He plans to host lectures and …

By Abrigul Lutfalieva
Face transplantation is an important recent development in reconstructive surgery for patients who have suffered the partial or whole loss of their face due to illness or injury. Recently, the Russian Health Ministry indicated that it will expand the list of transplantable body parts to enable face transplants.
In anticipation of this expansion, a group of doctors and scientists from St. Petersburg Medical University have been using corpses and …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have made a breakthrough for regenerative medicine. One of the most serious problems associated with getting artificial  kidneys to function in the body of a recipient is the tendency of the recipient’s blood vessels to close, preventing the transplanted organ from receiving blood. The scientists, using human-sized pig kidneys, have developed the most successful method to date of keeping these blood vessels open.
“Until now, lab-built kidneys …

By Andrew Rock
A severe shortage of organs for transplant in Australia has led to a bizarre and ethically questionable phenomenon: doctors have begun harvesting organs from diseased patients in the “upper age limit,” those 80 and over.
The shortage is the result of two main causes. Australia has one of the highest rates of refusal for donation in the developed world – 45% – a figure driven primarily by the wishes …