By Grace Kim As mentioned in previous articles, there are many factors that influence organ donors and affect the rate of organ donation, such as asking potential donors a second time or offering incentives through self-interest motivations. An important aspect to factor in organ donors and donation is religion. In many countries outside of the [...]

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer Many couples facing fertility problems turn to the assisted reproduction industry for help – the rise in the number of people seeking in vitro solutions has resulted in an increasingly large number of frozen embryos (as many as one million) being stored across the nation. These frozen embryos occupy an ill-defined space: [...]

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has big plans for the next few years: he’s preparing to transplant a head onto a donor body. This past Friday, at a conference in Annapolis, Dr. Canavero announced to a crowd of over 100 doctors, researchers, and reporters that he believes he can accomplish this feat in [...]

By Rose Bowen Last week, JAMA Internal Medicine published an article detailing the findings of an investigation into the effects that state policies have on organ donation and transplantation in the United States. Using data from 1988-2010, the researchers found that the majority of state policies promoting voluntary organ donation are ineffective at reducing the [...]

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer Yesterday, the California Senate passed the End-of-Life Option Act by a vote of 23 to 14. The bill, if it garners approval from the Assembly and Governor Jerry Brown, will make it legal for California residents with terminal illnesses to end their lives with doctor-prescribed medication. The bill was modeled after Oregon's [...]

By Remy Servis This week, doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas completed the world’s first partial skull and scalp transplant on Jim Boysen, a 55-year-old man from Austin. Since receiving a kidney-pancreas transplant 23 years ago, Mr. Boysen has been taking immunosuppressants to prevent rejection of the new organs. These drugs, while crucial to [...]

By Grace Kim Approximately 21 people die a day from waiting for organs, and there is an increasing need for organ donors—a higher demand for donations than there is available. Despite ways to try and increase the number of organ donors, attempts are backfiring. In an interview on NPR, the most common approach to appeal [...]

By Remy Servis Bionic, genetically modified “super-humans” have always seemed like a concept of the far future to our common culture’s understanding of evolution and human development. However, with research on altering the human germline becoming more and more prevalent in the scientific community, the possibility of such a being is not as far away as [...]

By Kaitlyn Schaeffer When stem cells were first discovered, their potential to alleviate suffering and cure disease was considered almost unbounded. However, their application to therapies has greatly outpaced research. Certain cancers are now treatable using stem cell-based techniques, but the vast majority of stem cell procedures are being conducted without any evidence that they [...]

By Grace Kim Approximately 21 people die a day from waiting for organs, and about 4,000 people are added to the national waiting list every month. The demand for organs is dramatically increasing, but the supply is increasingly diminishing. A lab at Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Imaging in North Carolina offers a potential solution: [...]