Slow Suttee

[pr1ss]

Tomorrow the  Regis and Kelly show will do their annual Valentine's week wedding. It will feature a young viewer couple chosen for their endearing qualities. Along with the excitement of a glorious gown and the latest fashion in cake, we know that an element of tragedy accompanies this nuptial feast. The groom suffers from an autoimmune disease

Comments

[subdermal]

The women in question donate their kidneys, yes? No wife is bound by law (or even church, that I am aware of) to give up her organs to her husband. Why would you want to stop them? And if everything has to be equal, I expect to see a large surge in the numbers of women supporting their husbands financially :)

[pr1ss]

I agree that this is voluntary. Women may be doing this out of a nurturing inclination, but they may also feel pressured by family dynamics.

Their willingness to do it does not mean it is truly safe. A standard component of all surgeries is to tell the patient that the treatment was a raging success. This verbal placebo is highly effective in the healing process, plus it reduces liability.

Outrageous

[anonymous]

This article is outrageous. Your allegations (which you admit are based on anecdotal news reports)are completely unfounded. There is a tremendous amount of data out there about transplantation; why not look into it before making such ridiculous claims? BTW, "Tissue banks"? Kidneys are not kept in tissue banks, they are used immediately. Now, you are correct, men receive more kidney transplants than women. However, a simple glance at the statistics show the reason why: There are more men than women who need transplants. You may also note that kidney donations by spouses (both genders) make up less than 10% of living related kidney transplants. All this data and much more is freely available at http://unos.org/data/about/viewDataReports.asp... )

[pr1ss]

The study in the second link found donors to be in relatively good health. That's encouraging. They weren't able to contact all of the 180 donors, and of those contacted, not all were willing to have their present health assessed. It would be more interesting to find out how many had died, and if their deaths could have been hastened by the donation.

Regarding my use of the term "tissue bank," I was not trying to imply that kidneys are stored somewhere. Rather that hospitals and organizations are in contact with each other regarding distribution. Perhaps there is a more accurate way to describe this phenomenon.

[anonymous]

Oh please, that was only one of many many studies which have been done. Of course they weren't able to contact all them, it was 25!!! years later.

Quicksand? No, it's slow-sand! What's your hurry?

[montecristo]

Suttee is a rather pointed and inflamatory term in this case, don't you think? In the case of organ donation, the efforts of the donor are not self-sacrificial in that osstensibly the donor values the donee and the donor's efforts are not fatal to the donor. Furthermore, the donor's efforts produce real, tangible benefit for the donee. The thing that makes suttee so abhorrent is that the spouse is murdered (or most charitably to the others involved) commits suicide, to no other good end at all. The deceased spouse is not brought back to life, and is indeed beyond any comfort at all.

Just yesterday, I read an article about a possible case of a kind of suttee that occurred over 5000 years ago. What I found most surprising about the article and the comments that followed it were the outrageous assumptions that people were eager to make about the dead people. For all they know, the woman may have hated the fellow in life. Perhaps the placement of her body in embrace of the dead man was injustice to the woman, not reverence for

Re: Quicksand? No, it's slow-sand! What's your hurry?

[pr1ss]

Fascinating news item. Perhaps they were in a co-ed army and met their ends in battle.

Not immediately fatal in most cases, doesn't equate to: as as safe as donating blood. If it were, there would be no shortage, and no need to discuss whether third world people should be able to receive payment for kidneys.

Re: Quicksand? No, it's slow-sand! What's your hurry?

[montecristo]

Perhaps they were in a co-ed army and met their ends in battle.

That was one of my speculations as well!

Re: Quicksand? No, it's slow-sand! What's your hurry?

[montecristo]

The shortage is not due to the safety of the procedure, it's due to the large amount of pain and inconvenience involved - nephrectomy is usually very major surgery, with weeks or months of recuperation.

In any case, the main reason for the shortage is people's unwillingness to donate their dead relative's organs, not due to a lack of living donors.