Twice Dead, set 6

Imagine, an HP Inkjet printer that can create life-saving organs, no more need for the ambiguity of determining brain dead donors.

“The public furor over the Wada transplant focused on the possible murder of the donor, but the medical profession was more concerned about unprofessional treatment of the recipient, Miyazaki Nobuo” (Twice Dead; Organ Transplant and the Reinvention of Death, Margaret Lock, p. 133).

This excerpt is merely one of many that Margaret Lock used in her book as an example of the controversy that the concept of the brain-dead definition of death has instigated. This particular high profile case was from an August 1968 heart transplant done in Japan by Dr. Wada Jiro, and the 30^th heart transplant in the world. It turned out that there was no documented time of death of the donor, or an EEG printout showing that he was completely brain-dead. Dr. Wada was also accused of replacing the recipient’s entire heart rather than just repairing a mitral valve that was previously documented as all that was needed. The recipient died after 83 days. Japanese physicians claim that this case was one of the reasons that organ transplants are still so controversial in Japan after 30 years.

Lock discusses many questions that have been raised regarding using organs from the brain-dead, including the recipients’ bodies rejecting the donated organ. She says that there was debate in the US in previous decades, but for many reasons, the American public no longer is overly concerned about where organs come from. At least not concerned enough to make it as controversial as abortion, or even stem cell research. Harvesting of body parts is not well known or discussed in American society or in the media. I, probably like many North Americans, have not thought much about where that donated heart in the news came from. Lock presents plenty of questions brought up by American researchers and medical professionals who have thought about the subject, one being the question of error in judging when someone is irreversibly brain- dead, as is shown in the following excerpt:

“Clearly plenty of room exists for conceptual confusion, but the possibility of actual mistakes and even malpractice cannot be ruled out. One is left to wonder whether there have been cases when procurement has started before the patient is indeed brain-dead. If organ donation proceeds, it is impossible to show when an error has occurred” (p. 124).

I believe there is a solution to the ambiguity, a different option. I think that the use of stem cells can be that option and that its research should be a priority in American medicine. It can re-grow skin, pieces of organs and according to some articles, even whole organs, using the cells of the person who needs it. That would eliminate the problem of organ rejection, eliminate harvesting living cadavers for organs, and eliminate looking at a brain-dead person as a container that holds the valuable commodity of organs. While looking up the creation of organs from stem cells from the person in need, I came across the idea of “organ-printing”, or “bio-printing”. It is a technology where the inkjet printer concept is remade to print layers, or sheets of biological tissue that can be layered and shaped by biodegradable molds into human organs. I found an article where this has been successful in reproducing bladders for children suffering from spina bifida. Using a body's stem cells to clinically grow new organs can be the future of organ transplant, and I hope it actually can create more detailed human organs than bladders and skin. With the amazing advances in technology, harvesting organs from brain dead living cadavers can become an archaic memory of the past.

Layers of skin can be carefully produced by bio-printing.



Articles on re-growing organs:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=1603783&page=3

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/04/03/engineered.organs/index.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/22/sunday/main3960219.shtml

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.09/13-breast.html

http://www.machineslikeus.com/cms/news/bioengineering-challenge-growing-
organs-stem-cells








photos from:

http://futurismic.com/2007/10/15/fleshjet-bio-printing-making-progress/

www.nextnature.net/research/?p=885



end of set 6