
Turning One Kidney Into Ten - robg
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/turning-one-kidney-into-ten/
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iamelgringo
I've been a critical care nurse for years. The hardest I've ever worked was on
a 24 year old man, that tried to commit suicide by shooting himself in the
head. His brain wasn't working so well, but the rest of his body was intact.
And, the family was amazingly selfless and decided to donate his organs.

We couldn't get the study to prove his brain death until morning, and he was
bleeding like a sieve. In 15 years of being a ER/ICU nurse, I've never given
one single person more blood products. There was a team of 5 or 6 of us giving
him massive transfusions, all to keep this young man's organs alive the rest
of the night.

In this ICU, we also took care of patients that had just received kidney
transplants. They are some of the most patient, long-suffering and most
grateful people you'll ever meet. Why? Because for the previous three to five
years, these people's lives have been consumed by having to go to dialysis
three times a week for four hours a session. They can't live any other way,
and a transplant gives them a new lease on life.

We were able to get the study to prove brain death the following morning, and
the organ donation team harvested his organs.

Two weeks later, our ICU received a letter from the organ bank, giving us a
brief update on each of the _24 people_ that received organs from this young
man. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had as a nurse.

All that to say, when organ donation happens, it's a truly beautiful thing,
and one of those things that renews my hope in humanity. I've had the donor
box checked on my driver's license for years. I'd encourage people to do the
same.

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TetOn
What I find disturbing in this piece is the seemingly massive false
equivalency being perpetrated. Donating a kidney is not like giving blood.
This is a major operation and carries with it an assortment of long-term
health risks to both the donor and recipient (though, obviously, the recipient
has essentially nothing to lose; long-term followup studies of live donors are
still pretty small and not that informative)...yet the entire article seems
predicated on "you'd be a monster _not_ to give up _at least_ one of your
kidneys!" Where's that attitude coming from, exactly? Why not just toss a lung
into the mix as well?

~~~
bd
They assume existence of donors already willing to donate, there is no call
for extra donations. It's just about how to do more efficient matching.

In this case "altruistic donor" could mean, for example, a mother with a sick
kid, which she wants to save by donating her kidney, but it doesn't help
because they are not a good match.

So she just gives her kidney to some random kid, with a hope that others in a
similar situations would do the same, which would eventually lead to her kid
getting a matching kidney.

Altruistic, because it's not guaranteed that her kid will get the _right_
kidney in time (only that there will be _some_ donated kidney left at the
end). But if the "chain of trust" keeps going on, chances are high everybody
would get the matching kidney.

