Pass Me That Kidney! Indian Edition

The Hindu is reporting the successful completion of India's largest ever "domino" kidney transplant: a chain of transplants in which A's relative donates a kidney to B, B's relative donates one to C, C's to D, and so on, until (in this case) F's relative completes the chain by donating a kidney to A. 12 patients (6 donor-recipient pairs) were operated on. Doctors at Johns Hopkins did a similar set of procedures in 2009. Physicians in Mumbai completed a 5-family domino donation last year; an earlier attempt at a 5-family donation failed when one of the 5 prospective recipients died. In 2012, doctors in 11 different American states completed the largest domino donation chain ever, involving 30 donor-recipient pairs.

Black Market Kidney Conviction in US

A man pled guilty yesterday to multiple counts of illegal trafficking in human kidneys. This is the first conviction under federal law banning the sale of human organs. The defendant took payments of $120,000 or more for each of three kidneys which he purchased from donors in Israel for $10,000 each. He was caught in a government sting operation, attempting to sell an organ to a federal agent. His attorneys argued that the resultant transplants worked, relieving the American buyers from the burdens of kidney disease and dialysis; that the organ recipients had sought him out and not vice-versa; that the donors in each case were aware of what they were doing; and that the surgeries were conducted by reputable and skilled transplant surgeons in well-known (but unnamed) American hospitals. The money, they argued, was used for "expenses associated with the procedures"--though it's not clear from the coverage what that's supposed to mean. Federal prosecutors were rightly unimpressed, noting that black-market organ sales pose a public health danger, and are also unfair, since they result in preferential allocation of organs to the rich (and corrupt).