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Rare 9-way Kidney Swap a Success

Posted by Soulskill on from the healing-with-math dept.

Okian Warrior sends news that a complex set of 18 surgeries has been successfully completed at California Pacific Medical Center and the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center that resulted in nine donors sending kidneys to recipients in need. This web of kidney swaps arose because many of the people with failing kidneys had donors willing to help them, but weren't a biological match. Rather than give up on the transplant altogether, doctors were able to arrange the willing donors in a way such that each patient who needed a kidney was able to get one. "Software matching programs have been driving the trend. The programs use blood type and other patient data from medical tests to connect people who are compatible."

5 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Piss-poor situation by penguinoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Part of the problem is the big shortage of organs. I'm not sure what to think about this, in that this sort of thing might decrease any purely voluntary no-strings-attached donations. Maybe we should just allow people to buy kidneys, instead of requiring this sort of complex web of conditional donation.

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    Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    1. Re:Piss-poor situation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Beautiful libertarianism. The life saving organ transplants go to the wealthiest first, it's the free market and it's the fairest way.

    2. Re:Piss-poor situation by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Beautiful libertarianism. The life saving organ transplants go to the wealthiest first, it's the free market and it's the fairest way.

      This is zero-sum thinking. Most life saving organ transplants go to the grave right now. If there was a financial incentive to donate, then there would be a LOT more organs to go around. Sure, they would go to the wealthy first as you point out, but there aren't that many wealthy people out there (by definition), so many more will go to the rest of us.

      There isn't any aspect of life where the wealthy don't benefit more than the rest of us. If that were a reason not to do something, then for the most part nobody would do much of anything.

    3. Re:Piss-poor situation by AuMatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Better solution- make all organs automatically donated upon death. The owners don't need them anymore. Then no money needs to be involved at all, and we'd have a ready supply. The family can get what's left of the body after any usable organs have been harvested. Bonus- a system that's actually fair, rather than making money the determining factor.

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      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    4. Re:Piss-poor situation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then who would I do heroin with? I'm not some pathetic loser with no gf.