Thousands of Lives Depend on a Transplant Network in Need of 'Vast Restructuring' (washingtonpost.com) 30
The system for getting donated kidneys, livers and hearts to desperately ill patients relies on out-of-date technology that has crashed for hours at a time and has never been audited by federal officials for security weaknesses or other serious flaws, according to a confidential government review obtained by The Washington Post. From the report: The mechanics of the entire transplant system must be overhauled, the review concluded, citing aged software, periodic system failures, mistakes in programming and over-reliance on manual input of data. In its review, completed 18 months ago, the White House's U.S. Digital Service recommended that the government "break up the current monopoly" that the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit agency that operates the transplant system, has held for 36 years. It pushed for separating the contract for technology that powers the network from UNOS's policy responsibilities, such as deciding how to weigh considerations for transplant eligibility.
About 106,000 people are on the waiting list for organs, the vast majority of them seeking kidneys, according to UNOS. An average of 22 people die each day waiting for organs. In 2021, 41,354 organs were transplanted, a record. UNOS is overseen by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), but that agency has little authority to regulate transplant activity. Its attempts to reform the transplant system have been rejected by UNOS, the report found. Yet HRSA continues to pay UNOS about $6.5 million annually toward its annual operating costs of about $64 million, most of which comes from patient fees. "In order to properly and equitably support the critical needs of these patients, the ecosystem needs to be vastly restructured," a team of engineers from the Digital Service wrote in the Jan. 5, 2021, report for HRSA, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
About 106,000 people are on the waiting list for organs, the vast majority of them seeking kidneys, according to UNOS. An average of 22 people die each day waiting for organs. In 2021, 41,354 organs were transplanted, a record. UNOS is overseen by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), but that agency has little authority to regulate transplant activity. Its attempts to reform the transplant system have been rejected by UNOS, the report found. Yet HRSA continues to pay UNOS about $6.5 million annually toward its annual operating costs of about $64 million, most of which comes from patient fees. "In order to properly and equitably support the critical needs of these patients, the ecosystem needs to be vastly restructured," a team of engineers from the Digital Service wrote in the Jan. 5, 2021, report for HRSA, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
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Why should the recipient get paid? The donor, however, should be a part of the payment chain. Assuming that removing their donated organ isn't a terminal event [youtu.be].
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Even if it IS part of a "terminal event", payment should go to the donor's estate.
You'd sure get a lot more donors that way.
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This should apply to blood, as well.
Particularly for blood, no.
I don't think we've come anywhere close to being able to screen for some of the blood-borne diseases that IV drug abusers are likely to walk into donation centers with looking for cash for their next fix.
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Amen.
You want to solve a shortage? Pay for product.
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I mean everyone else in the equation, besides the recipient is getting paid. This should apply to blood, as well.
Remember when blood donation centers were called "blood banks?" That was because donors were registered with a sanguinary credit for each pint they donated, with individual accounts maintained. If you ever needed blood, or a relative did, or a public call went out that someone else did, you could transfer credit for units from your personal account. Because of this incentive, there was in those days no shortage of donated blood.
But medical greed took over and all blood recipients now have to pay the exorbit
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Bikers .EQ. organ donor donchano!
It's funny because it's true!
I have spoken. Here. Today. At slashdot. Slash. Dot.
In the staff parking lot of a hospital, you're more likely to see an ostrich with a saddle than a motorcycle, or donorcycle as they're called.
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30 bikes parked at my hospital right now. I've ridden for 30 years, no probs. Tip of the day: don't start riding until you are older than 25. Also, don't ride sports bikes. Under-25s on sportsbikes are the donors.
Make everyone an organ donor (Score:3, Interesting)
Since the Supreme Court has said a person has no right to privacy or control over their own body, everybody should be an organ donor. You die, your organs get harvested.
It's to save a life, after all.
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Since the Supreme Court has said a person has no right to privacy or control over their own body
The SCOTUS ruled that women have no right to privacy or control over their own body. It's an important distinction to make, because I'm not aware of any laws banning vasectomies in the USA (which would be the closest analogy for cisgender males, since it's a medical procedure that prevents pregnancy).
I guess we'll find out in November how women truly feel about this.
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banning vasectomies ... since it's a medical procedure that prevents pregnancy
I don't think the moral conservatives have a major problem with vasectomies. Since the result is that fertilization does not occur. Once it does, interfering with the resulting zygote's surviving to term is their primary concern.
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I'm really tired of disingenuous arguments (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm getting really tired of disingenuous arguing about this.
As I'm sure you know very well, the court decision was based on the idea that a fetus is *not* part of the mother's body, but is (at least to some degree) a person in their own right.
You don't have to agree with that (it is entirely debatable), but nobody is arguing that kidney has moral status. Implying otherwise is arguing in bad faith.
Re:I'm really tired of disingenuous arguments (Score:4, Insightful)
but nobody is arguing that kidney has moral status
It is currently illegal in this country to take a person's organs after they die unless that person has explicitly said so. So yes, a dead person, and by extension all their organs, have more rights than a woman does.
Re: I'm really tired of disingenuous arguments (Score:2)
Technically they're not quite dead.
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The court history of that topic is actually far more complicated than people on either side want to acknowledge. For instance, while the Roe v. Wade decision explicitly avoided a decision on the topic of when life legally begins, it did recognize the competing interests at play between:
- The mother's health
- The mother's right to privacy
- The state's interest in protecting a mother's health
- The state's interest in protecting prenatal life
Or, to put it more bluntly, Roe v. Wade denied the personhood and "ri
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As I'm sure you know very well, the court decision was based on the idea that a fetus is *not* part of the mother's body, but is (at least to some degree) a person in their own right.
You can't be forced to donate an organ to save a person's life, but you can be forced to carry a fetus to term.
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You can't be forced to donate an organ to save a person's life, but you can be forced to carry a fetus to term.
There is no power on Earth that can force me to take a fetus to term....or anywhere else for that matter.
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If you were dying and in need of a transplant to save your life, you would not expect to demand some other person gives you their organ so that you can live. Failure to give you an organ is not killing you - you die because your body cannot survive without it.
So the argument is not that a kidney is the same as a person (the foetus), it's that you can't even force a corpse to donate an organ to keep someone else alive without the former occupant's consent.
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Those most concerned about the right to life of an 8 hour old zygote have little interest whatsoever about the right to life after being born. If they cared about what happens after a child is born, then they'd be out there adopting the babies, encouraging others to adopt, and supplying money so that single mothers can take care of their babies.
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Those most concerned about the right to life of an 8 hour old zygote have little interest whatsoever about the right to life after being born. If they cared about what happens after a child is born, then they'd be out there adopting the babies, encouraging others to adopt, and supplying money so that single mothers can take care of their babies.
Shhhh. Let's not bring reality into this discussion.
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If they cared about what happens after a child is born
They wouldn't be trying to starve LGBTQ+ youth [go.com], for one thing. I'll also throw doing something about school shootings in here too, since you'd figure even awful homophobic parents probably don't want to see their straight kids get shot.
All of this from the same political party that doesn't want to hear it if you personally hit a rough patch in your life. However, if you happen to be a big bank, auto manufacturer, or silicon producer, they'll be more than happy to slide you a few billion.
Monopoly is required (Score:3)
Right now, IF YOU ARE WEALTHY, you can apply to different hospitals in different zones to increase your chance of getting a transplant. But you need to fly to those hospitals and pay rent for months to do that. Hence the need for wealth.
If you breakup the monopoly held by UNOS, the situation would be far worse. Different rules, different requirements, basically it would be a horrendous mess.
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Why? (Score:3)
Why is the federal govt involved, in any way, in organ transplants?
It should stick to trying to run the country.
Drones, blockchain, something, something (Score:2)