Not a doctor; previously worked in a lab that matched solid tissue (organs) from donors to recipients.
The article has very emotive language, and not in my opinion the mindset of any doctor that has long left in their profession.
I can't speak for non-UK donation, but the bar is so high in order to be able to donate tissue. Maximum 4 hours from being declared DBD/DCD and retrieving tissue. Even then, if someone has expressed a lifelong wish to donate, ticked the box on their driving license registration, carries a tissue donor card... Their next of kin can say no, and that's final. 75% of potential donors don't get to be donors. With a growing list of ~3000 kidney recipients, 300 get donated annually. (I'll hold my hands up here, these figures are what it was in 2018 when I left)
It's still a morbid topic. The donation specialist nursing team (who do an incredible job) are called vultures as one of the nicer nicknames.
Doctors [can] do bias training to improve patient family responses to the donation offer, and most of them haven't, and exhibit unconscious negative reactions when talking about it, putting them off.
But that person isn't alive; they're not being murdered. Instead, they have the chance to save lives through the use of a body part they can no longer use.
If you want to save lives: talk to your families about your wishes. If you're ever up for the chance to change 10, 15, 20 lives, it will be too late to tell them about it.
I used to work in a genetics lab, and had to prepare trays of gel to visualise DNA tests (PCR testing to identify HLA alleles: effectively like finding someone's blood type, but for their immune system).
The compound in the gel that attaches itself to the DNA particles and makes it so we can visualise the results by UV fluorescence is Ethidium Bromide [1], one of the lower state Bromine salts the article mentions.
The way the electrophoresis gels are (were, by me and the other workers) prepared is by... microwaving a flask with it in. Repeatedly taking it out as it gets hotter to mix it.
Usually involving some release of steam. Which includes a small amount of the bromide. Fine in small doses, but when you do it multiple times a day, 5 days a week, 45 weeks of the year...
To this day I wonder how much of an effect it's going to have on me and my colleagues at the time.
This is why it's a known mutagen with a long list of very specific, strident toxicity warnings. That's the organic cation, though; compared to that, the Br- anion is utterly benign. You're looking at the wrong hazard!
Br- is a standard counterion in human-approved drugs (those formulated as HBr salts).
Bromide ion is in fact essential to animal (including human) life. It's necessary in trace amounts for the production of a weird S=N double bond in collagen IV, in a process where it is briefly converted to the BrO- ion (the +1 oxidation state). This was only discovered fairly recently; getting a fruit fly diet sufficiently depleted in bromide for the deficiency to show up was difficult.
Sea salt should have a fair amount of bromide in it. Bromine can be produced commercially by bubbling chlorine gas through sea water.
Apologies, I was writing this while balancing my son on one arm and mixed up some simplification with good old-fashioned mistakes!
I'll nip this in the bud and say "DNA particles" was definitely the wrong word.
You are correct, the Bromine here isn't really the problem; the fact that any intercalculation with DNA occurs is the main problem. Is it Bromine's fault? Not particularly, but it's an accessory in this instance. Based on anecdotal evidence it's common to the electrophoresis process.
My reason for bringing this up is just one of those relatable stories (/s) about why I also don't like working with Bromine (even if contextually it's not Bromine's fault, we love you Bromine!)
My PhD supervisor would wash his teeth over the sink where we'd rinse all the gel preparation tools.
He got throat cancer in his 50s and died soon after my PhD defense.
So, are you suggesting that the gel was the cause of the cancer for the supervisor? If so, was that sink’s drain connected to a diverter such that the waste didn’t enter the typical sewage system?
I don't want to hear any of these stories, considering I am a very clumsy person AND considering that I synthesized polycyclic aromatics. Thank god I got out after a couple of years, but sometimes I wonder what is still floating around in my DNA...
Yeah, that is always an option. However once boiling hot, if you introduce something into the flask it's more likely to create an explosion front.
A bit like when someone supercools a bottle of water and then taps it to make it freeze; except with exploding sticky gel, and it's as hot as lava*
*Not actually as hot as lava, but wow does it feel like it
I wouldn't worry about that. I've poured hundreds of gels and added the EtBr to it after microwaving it every single time. Never had anything close to that happen. Just use a sufficiently concentrated EtBr stock and you're adding like 45 µL to 45 mL.
This is great. I'm in DevOps and when hiring, the tech interview is a round we've been off and on over time. Doing code reviews instead makes a lot more sense.
The article has very emotive language, and not in my opinion the mindset of any doctor that has long left in their profession.
I can't speak for non-UK donation, but the bar is so high in order to be able to donate tissue. Maximum 4 hours from being declared DBD/DCD and retrieving tissue. Even then, if someone has expressed a lifelong wish to donate, ticked the box on their driving license registration, carries a tissue donor card... Their next of kin can say no, and that's final. 75% of potential donors don't get to be donors. With a growing list of ~3000 kidney recipients, 300 get donated annually. (I'll hold my hands up here, these figures are what it was in 2018 when I left)
It's still a morbid topic. The donation specialist nursing team (who do an incredible job) are called vultures as one of the nicer nicknames. Doctors [can] do bias training to improve patient family responses to the donation offer, and most of them haven't, and exhibit unconscious negative reactions when talking about it, putting them off.
But that person isn't alive; they're not being murdered. Instead, they have the chance to save lives through the use of a body part they can no longer use.
If you want to save lives: talk to your families about your wishes. If you're ever up for the chance to change 10, 15, 20 lives, it will be too late to tell them about it.
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