🚀 go-pugleaf

With an ever-increasing number of would-be organ recepients, and a flat
number of organ donors, donor orgran shortages have become more and more
acute in recent years.

In this month's issue of Technology Review, Susan Reed addresses the problem
of organ shortages and provides some possible solutions.  An excerpt
follows:

-------------

In  the summer of  1991, Gilbert H.  Mudge,
Jr., cardiologist and medical director  of the heart transplant program  at
Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recalled a patient who had recently
died while waiting for a heart transplant.  "He was 32 and left a wife  and
two young children," Mudge  brooded.  "It  was a tragedy.   Here we have  a
therapy that works, that can return people to productive lives, but  people
are dying because we  just don't have  enough organs to  go around."   Two
years later, Mudge struggles to remember the patient he had mourned.   "I'm
afraid I'm jaded," he finally says.  "There have been so many since  then."
His lapse in memory, and apparent frustration, are understandable.  Roughly
20 percent of patients waiting for heart transplants at Brigham and Women's
perish before  a donor  heart can  be  found.   The Partnership  for  Organ
Donation, a Boston-based  organization created  in 1990 to  help solve  the
organ shortage, reports that the  bigger picture is even worse:nearly  one-
third of patients awaiting hearts nationwide will die before a suitable one
is located.

     Organ transplantation is a victim of  its own success.  Once a  heroic
procedure, during the  last decade  it has  become accepted  therapy for  a
variety of end-stage diseases.  Today  the United States has more than  270
transplant centers  and nearly  70 loosely  confederated organ  procurement
organizations, which  coordinate the  distribution of  organs.   More  than
16,000 transplants  were performed  in this  country in  1992.   Yet  seven
people a day are now dying while waiting for one.  "The arithmetic is  very
simple," Mudge says.  "The list keeps growing, and the donor supply  hasn't
substantially changed."

     Indeed, between 1988 and 1992 the waiting list for organs  skyrocketed
86 percent, from 16,034  to 29,519, while the  number of organ donors  rose
only 11 percent, from 4,085 to 4,521 (between 1991 and 1992 there was  even
a slight drop in donors,  down from 4,532).   The United Network for  Organ
Sharing, an organization based in Richmond, Va., that aims to administer an
equitable organ-allocation system nationwide,  notes that more than  31,000
people were waiting  for organs  in July of  1993, as  the supply  remained
flat.  A survey commissioned  by the organizationthe National  Cooperative
Transplantation Studyreports that  in 1990, 83,028  people either died  or
were  maintained  on  less-than-optimal  therapies  in  the  absence  of  a
transplant.

     The dilemma has spawned an array of potential solutionsfrom new  ways
of recruiting donors  to methods for  actually growing organs  in the  lab.
And although none of these is  a panacea, together they offer  considerable
hope.

-----------

So begins this issue's featured article from Technology Review magazine.

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