Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay
Organ transplants have become a mass phenomenon in the United States. However, Siegel (2011) stated that at the same time, thousands of Americans die each year in the United States, do not having enough time to wait for their turn to receive a donor organ. When the speech is going about kidneys, there is a great shortage of organ donors in this sphere in the United States. Thus, the main thesis is the following: there exist many ways to reduce the kidney shortage, while only rational use of donor organs may help to overcome the existing shortage.Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay
To begin, it is necessary to mention that according to Beard et al (2013), more than 20,000 organ transplants – liver, kidneys, pancreas, heart, lung, and intestine tissues are made in the United States every year, and the issue of our focus is kidney shortage. In addition, the survival rate among patients operated in this way is 95% for recipients of kidneys, 87% for recipients of liver, and 86% – of the heart.Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay
So, the first way to reduce kidney shortage, according to Editorial Board (2014), is to end the existing waste of organs because thousands of people are waiting for their turn to receive a donor organ, while many organs suitable for transplant are simply discarded every year. It means that surgeons cannot timely solve all the existing nuances in their work and to transplant kidneys timely.
The second way is to help ordinary people to be aware about the problem of kidney shortage and to inform people that kidney transplantation is one of the safest surgical procedures. To illustrate people’s desire to help others, Cherry (2003) stated that over the past decades, public opinion polls in the US show that about 85% of the population is in favor of organ donation. However, only 28% of Americans are registered as potential donors in reality. Moreover, even such a register can not guarantee that the bodies of the dead will be extracted, as most hospitals refuse to take any steps in this direction without the written consent of the relatives of the potential donor. So, there exists a necessity to regulate this issue on federal level.Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay
The third way is rather disputable but it also should be mentioned as potential possibility to reduce kidney shortage. For expansion of organ donation, some experts suggest implementing the use of kidney from alive donors, but this variation is objected by WHO and its member states. The reason to reject this way is based on the principle that the human body and its parts shall not be a source of financial gain, but the costs associated with the donation and transplantation should be paid. Moreover, the shortage of donor kidneys and excessive dependence on dialysis, which though saves lives, but undermines the forces led to the fact that desperate patients begin to seek for illegal ways to get transplants.
And finally, one of the perspective ways to reduce kidney shortage is hidden in the fact that the shortage of donor organs for transplantation makes scientists to look for biomedical solutions that do not require the use of donor material. Regenerative medicine technologies are currently considered the most promising. These include gene and cell therapy and tissue engineering. Moreover, according to Haseltine (2003), there exists information that experts in the field of regenerative medicine are very close to the creation of an artificial kidney from a patient’s own cells. Thus, the success of the new development will open up a new era in transplantation, and it will also allow to radically solve the problem of shortage of donor organs and eliminate the possibility of graft rejection.
In conclusion, exploring the problem of kidney shortage from various perspectives, we have proved the thesis that there exist many ways to reduce the kidney shortage. On the one hand, only rational use of donor organs may help to reduce the problem, while constant work in the area may also give people information about the situation with kidney shortage and open the perspectives of organ donation. On the other hand, donor organs may not become an object of financial gain because solution of one problem will lead to appearance of another one connected with illegal traffic of donor organs. Thus, it seems that the last proposed way such as the use of biomedical solutions will open new page in the area of transplantation.Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay
References:
Beard, R. et al. (2013). The Global Organ Shortage: Economic Causes, Human Consequences, Policy Responses. Stanford Economics and Finance.
Cherry, M. (2005). Kidney for Sale By Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation. Georgetown University Press.
Editorial Board. (2014, September 1). Ways to Reduce the Kidney Shortage. The New York Times.
Haseltine, W. (2003). Regenerative Medicine: A Future Healing Art. Brookings Review, Vol. 21, No. 1.
Siegel, M. (2011, February 28). The Troubling Shortage Of Organ Donors In The U.S. Forbes.Kidney Shortage | Organ Transplants Essay