Turquoise wrote:
blisteringsilence wrote:
Turquoise wrote:
What's more paranoid? Me believing that a lucrative organ trade exists on the black market, or that I really should fear for my life everytime I see a Muslim saying prayers at an airport. If you think I'm paranoid, try the general public.
Dude, organs removed at hospitals in the US never see the black market. Is there a black market in organs? You bet your ass there is. Is it in this country? Nope.
Now, cadaver parts, I might agree with you. Not organs though.
You put way more faith in this country than I do.
What does my faith in the country have to do with my belief in the medical system? They're two seperate things. I WORK in the medical field. I see it every day of my life. I have helped people fill out the paperwork to donate a loved one's organs. I've transported organs from one hospital to another to be transplanted. I'm not paranoid about the system becuase I KNOW how it works.
Turquoise wrote:
That's not what I meant. What I meant was that, when you designate yourself as an organ donor, the priorities are slightly different. It's not that someone is going to intentionally kill you, but you might have to wait just a bit longer for a treatment -- at least that's what seems to have happened in certain cases.
Once you die as a donor, then... well, where the organs go is not always certain.
This is totally nonsensical. Why on earth would someone delay treatment becuase you're an organ donor? Its not even logial. Let's try some linear thinking here.
1. Organs must be recovered from a technically living patient. Someone who has had a heart attack and died CANNOT donate any of his or her organs. The donor must still have a beating heart when the operation begins.
2. Delaying any kind of treatment would make it more likely that the patient would die.
3. Therefore, you can't harvest the organs. Making the whole exercise counter-productive.
It's more likely that an organ donor would be subjected to MORE extreme livesaving measures (even after brain death has occurred) with the purpose of keeping the donor alive until the transplant team arrives to do the recovery.
And you keep referring to these "certain" cases. Cite your source.
Finally, let's go over what happens when organs are recovered.
1. Transplant team comes in, recovers the organs.
2. Before the surgeon lifts his scalpel, UNOS has already decided where each recovered organ is going, and has paged the recipient. The local lab has drawn extensive bloodwork and is testing it for problems. Like, say, a CMV positive kidney going into a CMV negative patient in renal failure.
3. The moment the organ is out, it is placed in a cooler, and handed to the transport team.
4. The Transport team rushes the organ to the receiving patient's hospital, where the patient is lying waiting on the table, or in preop.
5. The transplant coordinator in the receiving hospital signs for the organ, and takes it to the OR.
There's no place for an organ to just "disappear." It's not like a shipment of, say, M-16's. If someone were to steal one or two, the sgt that received them would just write it off to an accounting error. When you're only getting one kidney, well, most everyone that works at a hospital can count to one. It's not that hard.
edited to clarify
Last edited by blisteringsilence (2007-02-16 18:05:38)