By Andrew Rock
The World Health Organization estimates that current organ supply meets only a tenth of its need. This persistent shortage has led many people to search for organs elsewhere, resulting in a thriving black market. Desperate individuals who turn to the global marketplace usually enlist the services of a broker; brokers often charge $100,000 or more, a sum that is significantly more than what organ donors can expect to …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
A recent article in The New York Times has alerted the public to the enormous gap between supply and demand for organs worldwide. Reporter Kevin Sack revealed that not only are thousands of people participating in the global organ black market, they are also paying exorbitant sums to get their hands on much-need organs for loved ones.
Absent any national policy that might increase post-mortem organ donation or a …

By Asha Prasad
In a pilot study conducted at Imperial College London, five patients underwent an experimental treatment for stroke that utilized the participants’ own stem cells. To create the therapy, researchers extracted CD34+ cells, the set of stem cells in bone marrow that create blood cells and blood vessel lining cells, and injected them into an artery that feeds into the brain. Instead of morphing into brain cells themselves, CD34+ …

By Asha Prasad
In many countries around the world, religious principles sometimes clash with scientific advancement. Spiritual concerns often keep people from donating organs, and sometimes from receiving them.
This is not the case in India, however, contrary to what many believe. An article that outlines what different religions have to say about organ donation notes that various Hindu texts recognize the donation of organs as a good thing. Spiritual teacher Ravi …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Every year in the United States, 4,000 people die waiting for a kidney. Worldwide, the discrepancy between supply and demand is similarly dismal: the World Health Organization estimates that only about 10% of the need for kidneys is supplied by the current availability of organs.
Despite its illegality in most countries, there is a thriving market for organs worldwide. Kevin Sack of the New York Times has spent the …

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer
Three thousand people in the United States are currently on the waiting list for a heart transplant. Unfortunately, only about 2,000 donor hearts become available every year. Those patients awaiting transplants must instead rely on machines to circulate their blood for them, devices that put them at risk for blood clots, internal bleeding, and various infections.
Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Cardiothoracic …

By Jake Stern
Scientists from Imperial College London are testing an injection that could, in the future, replace heart transplants and other cardiac surgery. The subjects of the study are two dozen patients at Harefield hospital in the United Kingdom with serious heart failure and fitted with mechanical pumps. The gene therapy involves injecting a benign virus with copies of an enzyme that helps heart muscles contract by recycling calcium.
The replacement …

By Chiru Murage
There is a call for the Ministry of Health to establish protocols preventing the sale of Iranian kidneys to foreign patients. The Ministry, however, blames society for this problem. Doctors in Iran are thousands of dollars to carry out transplants on patients that come with fake documents to the country in search of people willing to sell their organs. Kidney donation to foreign nationals is illegal in Iran, …

By Saara Akhtar
As the interest in 3D bioprinting is sky-rocketing, it seems as though the limelight has illuminated a bigger problem for the technology that may be solved by the use of “ghost organs”. 3D bioprinting uses living cells to create models of organs and tissues.These lab-grown organs could be potentially created from adult pluripotent stem cells (cells with the capacity to differentiate many different cells).Thus, there is a …

By Chiru Murage

Face transplants provide a new life for victims of horrific accidents, maulings, and violent crime. Because scars from such accidents can’t be hidden, face transplants give patients the ability to regain normality in their lives after a traumatic event. Since April 2014, there have been 28 face transplants around the world. Dr. Luskin, CEO of the New England Organ Bank, says “anyone with this disfigurement would argue they’re …