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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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
