Hearts from cadavers beat anew: study

http://news.smh.com.au/hearts-from-cadavers-beat-anew-study/20080113-1lrb.html

In experiments that would make Dr. Frankenstein jealous, US scientists have coaxed recycled hearts taken from animal cadavers into beating in the laboratory after reseeding them with live cells, according to a study released Sunday.

If extended to humans, the procedure could provide an almost limitless supply of hearts, and possibly other organs, to millions of terminally ill people waiting helplessly for a new lease on life.

Approximately 50,000 patients in the United States alone die every year for lack of a donor heart, and some 22 million people worldwide are living with the threat of heart failure.

"The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said lead researcher Doris Taylor, director of the Center or Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

While there have been advances in generating living heart tissue in the lab, this is the first time an entire, three-dimension bio-artificial heart has been brought to life.

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UK mulls presumed consent organ donation

http://news.smh.com.au/uk-mulls-presumed-consent-organ-donation/20080113-1lqi.html

Dead patients in British hospitals could soon have their organs removed without doctors needing explicit consent to help save the lives of thousands of people needing transplants.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed the plan, saying he hopes a new organ donation system could begin as early as this year.

The proposed "presumed consent" system would be modelled on a similar program in Spain and allow organs to be removed unless a person had specifically opted out of the national register or their family objected.

The government hopes the change, which some patient groups oppose, will help overcome an acute shortage of organ donors and rise in unnecessary deaths in Britain, which has one of the lowest rates of donations in Europe.

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from crikey:

Organ donation:

Tim Richards, Transplant Waiting List Advocacy Group, writes: I'd suggest those who support a presumed consent/opt-out approach do so on the basis that it is one of several strategies, including clinical strategies, that together constitute best approaches to organ donor rates. With regard to Spain, the real lesson is that clinical practice and national co-ordination must be properly structured and funded to ensure the organ donor system can utilise the benefit an opt-out approach provides. After changing to an opt-out approach it took Spain a decade before bottlenecks in the system were dealt with. When asked whether they consent or not, families of deceased potential organ donors are likely to follow the default position of the organ donation system. If the default position is consent then the family will tend to consent. A recent study by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Chicago of 22 countries and data from a ten year period concluded as much and their analysis and modelling showed that "donation rates are 25% to 30% higher on average in presumed consent countries." The Churchill Fellow cited by Senator McLucas reports that family refusal rates in Spain are now just 15%. In Australia, the family refusal rate is much higher, about 50%.