It’s not an unusual theme: a young person enters medical school determined to help save the world – or at least his or her small part of it. As doctors, men and women hold so much potential in their hands and while some go on to practice in the more traditional fields, others move on to more developing areas of medicine, like transplantation. While every doctor does affect lives, what transplantation surgeons and researchers do is, quite literally, give life back to someone who had no chance of survival before.
Jeffery Steers, MD, is one such transplant surgeon. After graduating from …read more

Reporting on and reading about/listening to/watching human tragedy unfold is as old as the hills. We like to think that it’s in the interest of being informed, of being educated, of seeking ways to improve life. But is it? Or is it more sinister? Is it more a way of seeing how we feel about how others are doing things, of feeling superior, of thinking we would never have to make decisions or live through what others are?
I’m taking you back to the sad story of Kaylee Wallace and Lillian O’Connor once again (A transplant planned, a transplant not done …read more

Transplants are something that happen to someone else. Dying is also something that happens to someone else. Having to make heart wrenching decisions about death, dying and transplantation happens in other families, to other people. Or do they?
But what if – just what if – someone you loved became ill and the only way to survive was to receive an organ from someone else? Would those transplants and deaths only be happening to someone else?
Over 100,000 people in the U.S. need an organ transplant.
More than half of these individuals will die before an organ becomes available.
In the time it will …read more

The tragic death of Natasha Richardson put a very public face on the issue of organ donation. April is National Donate Life Month in the United States, so for the month of April, I’ll be writing about organ donation and transplantation from differing points of view. I have some people who have received organs, those who have donated organs, those who are waiting for organs, and those who take part in this miraculous surgery and the care afterwards (Organ donation after brain death ) .
Many years ago, before I even had children, I had a coworker who was waiting for …read more