Retrospect
Retrospect
The Wonders Of Organ Donation | Retrospect Ep.161
In this week’s episode we discussed organ donation. As you can imagine there is a lot that goes into the process of donation and transplants. So we spent this episode talking about the process, as well as some statistics. We also talked about the ethical dilemmas with some of the facilities that procure these organs for transplants.
Our Links:
Retrospect
Keywords
organ donation, immune response, tissue regeneration, medical tourism, organ procurement, transplant survival, anti-rejection drugs, kidney transplant, liver transplant, heart transplant, lung transplant, organ donation statistics, organ donor registration, organ donation challenges, organ donation ethics
Speakers
Jason (56%), Stoney (34%), Ian (10%)
Ian
Ian, welcome to the retrospect podcast, a show where people come together from different walks of life and discuss a topic from their generations perspective. My name is Ian, and as always, I'm joined by Stoney,
Stoney
hello
Ian
and Jason.
Jason
Hello everyone.
Ian
How's everyone doing?
Jason
Had a good week so far. It's, I should say it was a good weekend since, for you know, we record on Monday. So, I mean, we were talking about how our week has gone since the last the last time we recorded, yeah, it's been great. Weather has been dry, dry, dry. I'm hearing we might get some rain by the end of this week. Yeah, maybe, maybe my grass is dead. I even tried to even run the lawnmower because I didn't want to touch it with that little
Stoney
cool snap that came through. It's dry.
Jason
A lot of fire alerts right now, because of all it takes is a little spark, and here we go. But I
Ian
that was the I've we I finished rapping on that production was a part of this weekend, and it was such a bittersweet feeling. We were all tired from doing a whole bunch of work on it. So it's been nice to just like, Oh, we're not to worry about it anymore. But the same time, specifically me, I don't think I'm gonna run in their circles very often, so I just don't know how often I'm gonna come across those people. But some of them were really awesome. And I think more than anything, I made some really great friends through that whole process, which is kind of the sad part about it all, I was like, Oh man, I those are some great people, and I have to, I need to, like, actively try to, like, be a part of their lives moving forward. But like whenever we were doing the production, the backstage is not, like, super well insulated. So like during some of the matinee, like early day shows, it was hot back there, but for the those cooler nights, it was really nice back there to be, you know, in costume and doing all that stuff. And so that cold weather was definitely a blessing for a lot of us. But, yeah, it's
Jason
been the mornings have been nice. Yeah, I mean, I think was Friday, I got out there early, and I'm building up for this full marathon I'm running. So, oh yeah, I got out there and ran 13 miles. Oh my god. But I started running little after seven o'clock. What is your what is your so I finished up. It was after nine. I was gonna sign something. So I was running for over two
Ian
hours. Get out Okay, so that's what I was what I was gonna ask was, it was like, your average mile, you can run, like, in time wise, like,
Jason
I think I was averaging just under 10, okay, minutes a mile. I think when it all kind of plays out, but it's kind of, you got to stay on the schedule so to build yourself up to that point. So, um, you know, this week will be a little less, and then the following week I'll bump it up even higher. So not this Friday, but the following Friday, you know, my goal will probably be pushing 15 or 16 miles. Wow. So, I mean, it's gonna get to a point where I'm gonna have to get out there, like at six in the morning, because it'll take me four hours, oh my, to finish up where I need to go. So the biggest challenge I have right now is just the mental game of, you know, you get to two two and a half hours, just like I'm still running now, still got another hour to two hours to go.
Ian
I feel like I've driven. I've taken a road trip and driven four hours, and was like, Oh, I feel like we're in the car for forever. I can only imagine just running
Jason
halfway through. Luckily, I have some good podcasts. Well, that's what
Stoney
I was gonna ask you. Do you listen to podcasts, or do you listen to music? Or what? I
Jason
actually don't listen to music anymore. I used to now it's nothing. But I have my I have a prayer app that I listen to some, and then once I kind of finish that up, then I move into other podcasts that I like, that I believe it not. Listen to ours, yeah, I listen to, I listen to some others that I really enjoy, because I can really learn a lot of interesting stuff. Yeah, possibly giving us ideas. Oh, yeah, for future, for future episodes. But, but, yeah, so, but, I mean, you have to keep yourself, oh
Ian
yeah, mentally, mentally engaged
Jason
for to be, you know, running that long, yeah. And so I'm, but, yeah. So I did that last Friday. And, but luckily, the weather has been nice, so the mornings are cool. Cool, yeah, and it just gets warmer than a day. I mean, I think we call that Indian Summer. Call it so which, believe it or not, I don't mind a warm day, if the mornings are cool, right? Man, I, you know, I could, I can live to me, I think that's the ideal climate. If it would always get down to, you know, the upper 50s every morning, even if it heats up to 9095, during the day, I would be fine with
Ian
that. That was the, that was the summer season where I lived at in Canada, like the nights you'd have, like, really cool, right? Dry night, comfortable, yeah. And then, you know, for the morning it would warm up, and then, you know, it may get upwards of 70, probably it would just barely touch 80, sometimes, yeah, hottest part of the summer, and then it would drop back down again.
Jason
We can't, we can't get that, oh, down here, where we where we live, so
Ian
not in the swamp. No,
Jason
it's not so
Stoney
I'll never forget that year I came home from,
Ian
oh yeah,
Stoney
Aspen. You told us about that, yeah, on Christmas Eve, negative 11 in Aspen, so I had winter clothes with me. I got off the plane in New Orleans, and it was 85 degrees on Christmas Eve. It was like, I got off the plane and got smacked in the concrete facing the with a concrete wall. It was just, Oh, my God, 100%
Jason
humidity. You're coming, you're coming from, you know, a mile or so up higher
Stoney
in elevation, 17% humidity, down
Jason
to, down to one of the below sea level. Speaking of, what do you think is the lowest I learned this, okay, okay, speaking of sea level, and just absolutely, just just kind of what I call cliff. Clavin lore, okay, what is the city with the lowest seat below sea level in the world?
Stoney
Salt Lake City.
Ian
Oh, is it in America, or is it it's worldwide? No, I don't know. Then at that point,
Jason
Jericho really, like, 800 feet below sea level. Wow,
Stoney
they're in trouble if the water's right. No kidding, huh?
Jason
So just I found that out the other day. Of like, that's interesting, but yeah, Jericho, wow. And it's actually the city, the longest living inhabitants, city in the world. Wow. It goes back 10,000 BC. They have found evidence of human civilization, the longest occupied city. Wow, in the world,
Stoney
that's kind of cool. Yeah, so just
Jason
for our listeners, right,
Ian
right? A little fun fact,
Jason
but I really wanted to kind of lead into where our topic today is, is organ transplants in that whole industry. And imagine yourself that you're in need of a new organ, whether it might be lungs, a heart, a liver. You schedule you call your doctor, you schedule a date, you go to the hospital, you walk in, they show you a machine, and they show you either lungs that are breathing, a heart that's beating, or a new pancreas, or whatever the case may be, that looks healthy and well. And so that's what's fixing to go in you. And you go in, you get the procedure done, there's no rejection, and you go and live a very healthy life and functionally normal.
Stoney
What future book is this?
Jason
Actually, that is what the hope of the new, new technology as it comes on board cloning stuff? Well, it's not cloning, it's it's actually tissue regeneration, yeah, and they're there. They are making some headway in that regard. So with that being said, you know, we came up with this topic because, you know, we hear about it because we all sign up, either you sign up or you don't know, here, where we live on your driver's license. I believe in some parts of the world. Matter of fact, I was reading something in England now they are fixing to adopt where everybody automatically is enrolled in organ donation. And you have, you have to make the option to opt out. So you
Stoney
see, Canada's kind of doing the same thing. I have that further down in my notes, I need to find it with the maid program, they are pushing people that need transplants of one organ to go ahead and use the medical assisted in dying program, the maid program, and then those people are automatically donating their uh, their organs also. Uh, I had a friend of mine here in South Louisiana who who needed a transplant, and he went to the doctors. He had some brain issues, and he went to the doctors, and he they brought him to this, like cryo room or something. And there was 15 or 20 brains in this cryo stuff. And they said, Well, you have to pick something out. And so he saw this one, average looking brain. And he said, Tell me about this one. He says, well, that brain is a million dollars. And he said, Why is that brain so expensive? And he says, Well, that was a Yale student who was in an accident and lost his brain. And we know what, you know a Yale student is capable of. And so he went down the road and saw this other brain that had a few more wrinkles and a little bit bigger and he says, What about this one? And he said, Well, this is a Harvard student, and that's about a million and a half dollar brain. Same reasons, we know what they're capable of. And so the guy says, Well, I kind of need to go in another direction. And he saw this little video, small brain with no wrinkles, no nothing on it. And he says, Well, what about this one? And he says, well, actually, that's a ten million brain. And he looked at the doctor and said, Why is that one so expensive? And he says, Well, that's a student from Texas A and M, and the brain's never been used before.
Jason
I there's always a Texas A and M joke that's right, considering what just happened this past weekend. But
Stoney
y'all Sorry, I had to do it. Had to do it. Didn't know how it's gonna work. It in. But
Jason
so what do y'all, I mean, what's thoughts on, on this, this whole issue are, I'm just curious how y'all are, y'all organ donor,
Stoney
organ donor. I have actual, a couple of friends. I had a friend of mine from California who actually had a double lung transplant. He was a pilot. He was a Gulfstream pilot, and something happened, and his his lungs just deteriorated, and he's one of the few people that successfully had a double lung transplant. Most of the time it's just one lung or a heart or something. Very few people can survive a double lung transplant, right? And it was six or eight months. He's doing fantastic. They even allowed him to get on a plane and fly. This was so successful. And then he went down to see his daughter in San Diego. He lived in Portland, went down to see his daughter in San Diego and caught COVID and never left the hospital and passed in the hospital. But he, it was amazing the process that he had to go through to get this double lung transplant.
Jason
Well, you know, the this whole, you know, in kind of looking at information on, you know, that way I would have some things to talk about on this, on this episode. It's interesting. I did follow listen to some some TED talks on this topic, some other just YouTube videos. And of course, I've got some statistics to share with our audience. But you know, some of the three main problems in that we have because, I mean, while organ transplant is probably one of the greatest medical advances in the latter half of of the 20th century, because, I mean, some of this, you know, 50 years before, would have been science fiction. You know, it does come with a lot of challenges in doing this. And the problem is long term, the short term seems to be successful. I'm looking at some stats right now. Right now, the one year national survival rate for a heart transplant is 91.66% followed by, I should say, Yeah, heart, kidney, I'm Seeing 96% survival rate in liver, 94% so the problem comes in is, as time goes on, in one of the more fundamental issues that recipients of transplants confront is something that we need, and that's our immune response. Months, when you introduce a large mass of foreign proteins in your body, the human, human immune system is going to react and it's going to attack that, because it's programmed to this is a foreign substance, and we need to attack it. Yeah, unfortunately, and what happens? It attacks the graft, and then the ultimately, the organ just ultimately fails over time. I think the the numbers I saw, the average lifespan of a of a transplant is somewhere around 12 to 15 years after transplant, from what I've been able to read,
Stoney
but see, that's one of the things that with my friend telling me too, not only do you have the transplant and then you have to worry about it, you know, being rejected, but he was also on 18 to $2,500 a month in medicines to help stop that are slow, right?
Jason
Yeah, yeah. These, these anti, for the rest of us, anti immune these drug what they call suppressors. Suppressors, yeah, and fortunately, you know that comes with its own risk, because not only when it suppresses the immune system. It's it can't target that specific thing. It suppresses the immune system in general. And so unfortunately, what they have found is, as time goes on, common illnesses that would be no big deal for most people become very big deals for these people. And not only that, they did the chances of cancer coming go up dramatically, because normally your immune system would actually checks a lot of things that would happen in your body. And that's not happening with these drugs, and you've got to take them religiously every day. You can't miss a day. And
Stoney
that's what my friend's wife said he had COVID before, and it didn't even hardly bother him, but this time he got it, he never left the hospital, and it's because of those reasons right there.
Jason
Yeah, they're saying right now I'm reading here. I said lungs is the most difficult organ to transplant. Wow. So in the most sought after are kidneys, followed by livers, really? Yeah,
Stoney
there's, there's a couple of things that we need to look at. When you're looking at this. There's two types of organ donation, and one is to help people with new organs, and the other one is for science. So when you pass, your organs go, you donate your body to science. But then, like with the kidneys and stuff like that, then there's also two types of organ donation, one when you've passed and one when you're still alive. You have two kidneys. You can actually donate a kidney to somebody. I have, a friend of mine right now who's on the list that needs a kidney. And I can't because of all my medical stuff, but had I not had gone through all of this, I would have taken the test to see if one of my kidneys would have been good. So you can do that too. And so some of the organs, like kidney, and I think part of the liver too, if I'm not mistaken, because a kid liver regenerates itself. So you can give somebody part of your liver, and they can build upon that, right? But again, you're taking these anti, you know, drugs right
Jason
in there, right there. There's a lot of of work that's right now going into trying to find a way, and I read some things with the possibilities of stem cells. And you know what's kind of with our organs? It's not like our skin. You know, our skin has a means of repairing itself, a heart. If you take off a piece of heart, it doesn't grow back, and fortunately, that causes some major problems. But there are some things coming up that I think have shown some success, especially in pigs, and believe it or not, in the zebrafish that you know, they kind of read, their organs regrow and and so, if they can replicate that, and as a way of stimulating the cells around the removed area to get them to recognize that, okay, We need to rebuild tissue. It kind of happens when you're born and as your body and it gets to a point where it stops growing right outside of, you know, when you scrape your knee or your hand or whatever the case may be. So there are, there are some attention. Ups to try to get the body to recognize, to start working. So if you can get that, well, you know, wow, that talk about that would be a game changer. So, you know? And kind of the scenario that I opened up with, they call that medical mechanical profusion is the term, and it's basically, it's of a piece of equipment. It's basically size of a small refrigerator that they put these organ in to, to basically keep them alive. Because one of the other bad parts about organ transplant is the lifespan of an organ from when you remove it, from from from one party, and the time frame to get it into another body is very limited, and it's just what it is, because the minute blood stops flowing to these organs, you know, within a span, depending on the organ, I've read anywhere from anywhere from four to eight, Nine hours, depending on the organ, the organ is dead, right? So that's reason they have surgeries at all hours of the night, whenever one is located. So and once again, if you can rectify that, where you can get an organ inside of the machine, where, in essence, it pumps blood to that organ, keep it alive. Then, man, you talk about that's would be incredible, as far as the whole that whole nature of getting organ from from point A to point B.
Stoney
Interesting fact there my friend who had the double lung transplant, as I stated, was a Gulfstream pilot. That jet was a volunteer jet that I don't know. I guess over the course of 25 years, he must have told me about 15 organs that that jet would pick up and go deliver somewhere to somebody on the donation list because it was free. Okay, the owner of the jet said you can use my jet for this if you need it, to go to Dallas or to whatever California or wherever you need it. And he would fly that with the medical personnel to that hospital so they could do the transplant.
Jason
Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's because
Stoney
it's that life, you know, it's needed that fast. And there's a group of people that do that to help get those parts to people that need them, right? And he said,
Jason
the kidney is the most transplanted organ worldwide, followed by the liver and the heart. The
Stoney
kidney is also the most needed. Yeah, yeah. And
Jason
sometimes I wonder, why is that? What is it with the kidney? And I kind of start thinking about, Okay, what probably organs of the body take the most abuse by, sometimes by our own hands, and then now, sometimes you may be born with a defect there, and there's no fault, but I'm just trying to think of what makes those particular organs fail the most, and I probably a lot of it has to do with what we put in our but
Stoney
I was fixing to say the same. These are the filters the most commonly donated organs are number one, kidney, two, liver, three, heart, four, lungs, five, pancreas, six, intestines, and seven is tissue and composite graphs. A lot of that has to do with the filters of the body, doing something, filtering something out. What are we putting into our body? We put
Jason
a lot of bad stuff, a lot of times in our body. And there's,
Stoney
there's in the US. There's 89,000 individuals waiting. This is just for kidneys alone. 9400 needing a liver and a few you know some smaller numbers for hearts and lungs, but 17 people die each day waiting for an organ.
Ian
That's crazy,
Stoney
and someone is added to the national waiting list every 10 minutes. Can you I mean, that's just in 2023 over 46,000, organ transplants were performed, 16,000 deceased donors and 7000 living donors. Remember I was saying you can't be alive and still donate something. Again, saying kidney and liver transplant. Mostly, you know, 27,000 kidneys and 10,000 livers transplanted
Jason
in 2023 it seems like the kidney is I just Kyle. It's so disproportionately listed as needing to be chant. I'm just, you know,
Stoney
well, so many things add to that. When I got diabetes, when I caught the diabetes, so to speak, my livers. My kidney started tanking because it does something with the insulin resistance. There's so many different things that we do and can do to affect different parts of our body, and that's one of the reasons they said I could not be on the donor list for my buddy. Because, you know, there's
Ian
a lot of things that happen I think that play into kidney failure. Like, like you're saying, because it I think it filters out. I'm not mistaken. I think it filters out blood, doesn't it? Yeah, kidneys, yeah, filters, yes. I think there's a lot of things that can cause what
Jason
you put in your body. Can can, you know, plays in that. But right,
Ian
there's probably a big Venn Diagram of, like, what causes the kidneys to be the ones? There's
Stoney
also some tissues that can be donated. I got a list of those, the corneas, which is the outer layer of the eye, which is commonly donated to restore vision. You can't you can donate the whole eye, but only really the cornea is, is donated, heart valves, bone, skin, which you kind of mentioned that a little bit tendons and ligaments to repair sports or injury related damages and veins to help improve blood circulation during surgeries like bypass and then some other things can be done for research, eyes, the whole eye, bone marrow and hands and faces. That can be done viewing a vestibular composite allograft, which can possibly provide some new possibilities for people with other injuries.
Jason
Right now. I'm looking at a figure here, a waiting list by age. And this was September 2024, it seemed like the highest the age group with the highest number on you know, that are waiting for a transplant is age 50 to 64. 43,829, people, followed by 65 and older, 26 460, and then under that would be 35 to 49 23,203 and then the numbers go down quite a bit after that, 18 to 34 8420 11 to 17, 966 to 10, 464, and under five, 642 so pretty recent data. So, and I'm pulling this from a website called the Health Resources and Services Administration so you know it goes in and talks about a lot of and then by another one is by ethnicity. This is 2023, data, 40,476 were white. 28,005 52 were black. 23,757 were Hispanic, Latino, 8673, were Asian. And then, of course, it really goes down. American Indian, Alaska, native, 901, Pacific Islander, 603, and multiracial, seven, 937, so that's, that's a big drop from kind of the three dominant groups to Asian people. So But Do y'all know the the worldwide who holds the I'd
Ian
imagine to be somewhere with, like a large population density, but I
Jason
don't know if that's, I mean, transplants have been done. Who? What country claims the most?
Stoney
Oh, it would have to be India, Mexico or the Philippines, actually, the
Jason
United States. Oh, okay, well, I
Stoney
mean, you said in the world, you know the world? Yeah,
Jason
the United States. Followed by what country you think
Stoney
Mexico,
Jason
Spain, really?
Stoney
I'm not so sure about that one, because I was looking up some figures on this one too.
Jason
Now I will say this. This was back in 2019 data. It says Spain reaffirmed its global leadership and organ donation during 2019
Ian
oh, so is it donation? What trans it says, though, in terms of transplant
Jason
activity, in 2019 Spain posted a rate of 117.4 transplants, PMP. This is second only to the United States, which posted a figure of 120 3.4 so this is due to the significant live donor transport, transplant activity, so the United States is at the top. Wow. But yeah, it's. Said, I'm looking at some data here. Organs that have been successfully transplant include the heart, kidney, live, liver, lungs, pancreas, blah, blah, blah. Some organs, like the brain, cannot be transplanted. Sorry about the Texas A and m1 tissues include bone, tendons, all that stuff. I think Stoney kind of touched on that a little
Stoney
bit. So what do you think a kidney transplant costs?
Jason
I would venture to say somewhere around $200,000
Stoney
on average, 442,000 How about a liver transplant?
Jason
I would venture to say it's probably close to the half a million mark, 878,
Stoney
878,000 How about a heart transplant?
Jason
I'm gonna go with a million.
Stoney
Million, six. How about a lung and a double lung transplant?
Jason
2 million.
Stoney
The double long, it's, it's, it's right under a million for one and 1.6 for a double lung. And then again, on top of that, you've got up to $2,500 in medical, you know, in medicines, post transplant medicines and stuff and follow ups and things like that. Now in India, the kidney transplant is 15 to 25,000 in Mexico and Turkey, liver transplants go from 60 to 80,000 and the Philippines, the heart transplant can cost between 30 and 60,000 Wow. There are some additional risks, you know, doing medical tourism that a lot of people don't think about, because when you do this to your body, you you're, you know, your immune system does take a tank, and the cost savings are significant as a motivator number one, but you know, patients can face additional risks, including infections, lower donor screening standards. You know, in America, you got to go through a big, big process to even become a donor, and then just the logistical challenges for your follow up care, just because you had it done in another country doesn't mean your doctor here in America is going to follow up on that care. And then there's a lot of ethical concerns too, as far as the source of the donor organs and things like that. And you know, some countries have been criticized for exploiting vulnerable. You know, people taking their organs.
Jason
You know what? Ethnicity donates the most organs.
Stoney
Simple, huh? Dead people. No, no,
Jason
well, that's a given, yeah, white individuals, really, yep, historically in the US deceased organ donation among all race ethnicities, minority populations was lower than that of white individuals. So yeah, but I mean, Stoney, you mentioned about, didn't you mention that is added? You added? You mentioned about adding to the organ donation list every day, they say 5600 people in the US die each year while on the transplant waiting list, and about 16 per day. That's and that's unfortunate. That's one of the that's one of the problems with the whole, the whole industry. It's there's not enough people donating organs for versus how many people need new organs. So that's actually one of the three major issues right now that are that's that whole industry and is facing, you know, we mentioned that supply, the demand out trips the supply.
Ian
Yeah,
Stoney
well, I think part of the problem with that is the OPOs, the organ procurement organizations, are under a lot of scrutiny right now for a number of reasons, with some of their ethics, some of their policies, holding on to, you know, organs and things like that. And I don't know if y'all want to get into that or we can do that later in the show, but, you know, there's a lot of mistrust in the system.
Jason
Well, I mean, I you know. I mean, it's, you know. I mean, I mentioned during the pre show that. You know, I attended a funeral for a my girlfriend had a relative who had passed away. I think it was near 102 but he was a religious brother, but he had donated his body to science. So it's, it's for some reason, people are a bit afraid right to to give away their organs after death. But or, or maybe people are just not. Don't think about it. Well.
Stoney
Think about, you know, think about what you just said, the Egyptians, when they passed, they used to take their organs. They even had a special tool that pulled their brain out through their nostril, and they put their organs in special jars to be buried with, to take them along with them in the next journey, right? And so, you know, especially people of faith and things like that, you know, they don't know I want my body to rise when the good Lord comes back. I mean, where I guess my organs are going to be took care of, because I won't need them anymore. But, you know, I could see where there's some skepticism. And now with the, you know, the accountability and some of the allegations on some of the OPOs there, there's a problem, yep,
Jason
well, they say, what, here's, this is interesting. What culture does not do, does not donate organs.
Stoney
I don't know, gypsies, gypsies, yeah, really, yeah. I think I heard that.
Jason
They say gypsies are on a whole against donation, although they have no formal resolution, their opposition is associated with their belief about the afterlife. Kind of talks about the kind of touches on what you were talking about with the ancient Egyptians. Gypsies believe that for one year after a person dies, the soul retraces its steps, so in essence, it would need its organs.
Stoney
That's interesting. Yeah, interesting.
Jason
Yeah, I'm talking about religious beliefs. I'm pulling up some data here on religious attitudes about donation, yeah,
Ian
because I feel like there's a lot. I mean, there's always been the debate about like bearing versus cremation and like the Christian context, obviously, because, for the same reason, of like, you know, your body being, you know, raised in the end,
Stoney
oh, you know, I wanted to be buried for a long time, but now I'm kind of looking at cremation as what I want now, because I'm figuring that's my last chance for a smoking hot body.
Ian
Yeah, but you're right though,
Stoney
you know. But how many things you know we're I just spoke to someone. We are going to have an episode coming up ask the mortician. And I can't wait till we delve into a lot of these things. But how we've been buried like we're talking about with the Egyptians, has changed over the years in some of the larger cities, like New York, they aren't burying people flat, six feet down now, now they got a special tool that digs into the earth 12 to 14 feet and then the caskets are up and down, instead of side to side, because we're getting out of room to bury our people. So how we're doing this is changing with the advent of cremation. Back in the late 90s, California had to pass a law that says that if you have implants, female implants in the breast augmentation, that they have to be removed before cremation, of course, because that doesn't burn and it melts and covers and destroys the jets in the cremation thing, and that's $15,000 at the time to replace it, so now they had to pass a law to have that removed. So how we bury people is still changing every day. Yeah, what was, what's the real banger? The bell ringers back, you know, and 817, and 1800 casket had a little bell on it, because they buried so many people that really weren't dead, you could ring the bell and they'd come to dig you out of there. So,
Jason
yeah, I'm reading this UT Southwestern Medical Center website has religious attitudes about donation, and it lists all the various religious traditions. You know, I mentioned about gypsies, but it appears to be most seem to be okay with it, as long as the donation is made by the, you know, in good faith, by the individual, and it's used for intended purposes, and not for just experimentation. So I see Islam in 1983 the Muslim. Religious council initially rejected organ donation by the follows of Islam, but it has revised its position provided donors consent in writing before their deaths, organs of Muslim donors must be transplanted immediately and not stored in organ banks. Hmm. And they said now Jehovah's Witnesses, according to the Watchtower Society, the legal corporation for for the religion, Jehovah's Witnesses do not encourage organ donation, but believes as a matter of best left in individual conscience, all organs tissues, however, must be completely drained of blood before transportation. Wow. So yeah,
Stoney
the number of organ donors in the US has steadily increased over the recent decades, and that's reflecting both deceased and living donor programs. In 2023 the US recorded 16,335 deceased donors, continuing a 13 year upward trend. That same year, we saw 60, 953 living donators, a slight increase from the previous year. This this upward trend increased awareness from improved organ recovery and transportation systems nationwide. So it's still on an upswing, but like Jason said, it's just not enough, and they're not getting to the people that need them.
Jason
It says the, you know, what country has the lowest organ donation rate? It's a country called My, my, Amar, m, y, a n, m, A R may have the low huh. Miramar, my Mr. Myanmar, or whatever it's called, maybe the lowest rates of actual deceased donors, PMP, but medical professionals in the country may motivate and helpful hopeful. Right now, the state here in the states, California, performed the most transplants in 2023 while Vermont performed the fewest Wow according to Oregon procurement and transplant transplant network data. The data includes transplants, Hall organs through December of 2023 so
Ian
they must statistics on this subject is,
Jason
oh yeah, crazy. Well, I mean, you have to, kind of, I could see why keeping stats on this would be very important.
Stoney
Well, I think part of that is, is that now they're going to have to, because just of the transparency of the OPOs, the organ procurement organizations, who are mismanaging their role horribly bad. You're going to have to keep a tight rein on that. And they're just messing up so many things. Part of that is as you were talking about the racial inequalities before patients of color, especially black and Hispanic individuals, are disproportionately affected by delays and lower transplant rates, despite compromising the significant share of the wait list, And these groups often receive fewer transplants due to inequitable service from the OPOs. They're just not being able to get those organs to the people that need them, for whatever reason. Well, I think another fact that I ran across, I'll go ahead and shoot that in there. 90% of Americans support organ donation, but only 50% are registered donors. I
Jason
think a lot of it has to do with just, I don't think people think about it, you know, it's unless it's something that's automatic. That's why I kind of mentioned that. I think England was moving to a automatic where you would have to opt out if you had something you did not wish, which, you know, I don't, I don't see a problem with with that. It looks like Pittsburgh is the transplant capital
Ian
of the world. Really
Jason
says surgeons have before more than 17,000 transplants established in Pittsburgh as the organ trans plantation, capital of the world. Hmm. You know why that's interesting?
Ian
Is there, like, a big hospital out there that does it, or, like a or is it like those procurement facilities out there? Yeah.
Jason
Yeah, I don't know. I have to find if what I think it had something to do with a particular doctor there. Wow. So, yeah,
Ian
that's kind of cool though. I mean to be, I don't know if there is one or a couple of doctors that are just like the best, what they do, like, that's just the the place to go.
Jason
But yeah, yeah. Right now, trying to pull up states with the highest, lowest number of transplants performed, because I'd like to know what. All right, unfortunately, my internet's moving slow, so it's not coming up right now, it's still spinning and thinking, so once it pulls up, I'll be able to give out. And you said information, you
Ian
said that Vermont was the was the least, the least, as far as in California,
Jason
was the most, the most transplant transplants. Okay, right? Which, I mean, you know, I mean, California is a big state, and, yeah, there's just a lot of people, you know. So it's, I think I saw that, how
Ian
much of that is population size,
Jason
exactly. I mean, I think California's population was 40 million people. It's
Ian
more than Canada, which isn't wild to think about, yeah,
Jason
yeah. So once again. You know, California performed the most transplants in 2023 while Vermont performed the fewest. Uh, the data includes transplants for all organs through december 23 three states, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana had no data.
Ian
Wow, interesting.
Stoney
There's not a lot of people in Wyoming. I can kind of see that, you know, but
Jason
yeah, right now, highest is California at five. Well, my computer is kind of acting up. Highest and lowest number of transplants performed. So California after that would be Texas, then New York, Florida and Ohio. And then the lowest is Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, South Dakota and North Dakota. Wow,
Ian
that's like a little cluster over there. That was like, Yeah, which is interesting, exactly.
Jason
Yeah, it's a Yeah. But the topic is, is, is interesting. And I, I would encourage people to register that you know, to be an organ donor, because you never know what mean. If you know, once you pass, you should all have no need for your organs anymore, and if they can help someone else have a decent quality of life, then you know, we can, you know, why not? Right?
Stoney
I am an organ donor, and I never thought that I would actually live this long. But if I were to live to like, 102 or 103 years old, I think that would just be insane. But if I did, and if asked why I live so long, I'm just going to tell somebody that I ate a pine cone every day.
Jason
Okay, a pine cone,
Stoney
a pine cone, and see how many people would do it
Ian
just to live that low.
Jason
I've actually heard about eating pine bark and not pine cone. I'm
Stoney
just gonna say I eat a pine cone every day. That's how I live this long. What was it? George Burns smoked cigars, was a womanizer, and had four or five drinks every day, and he lived 101 102 years old. So you never know. Well,
Jason
right now, they say adult kidney transplantation is the most, perhaps the greatest success among all the procedures. More than 270,000 have been performed since 1970 so now that's
Ian
interesting. I
Jason
mean, they got all this. I mean, it's just unbelievable. So what is the most rejected organ transplant? Probably the lungs. He goes at five year post transplant, 80% of lung, 60% of heart and 50% of kidney are affected, while liver are only 10% so if you need a liver transplant, that's that's your best that's your best bet. And that's
Ian
like talking about rejection, like the fact that it's like, there's like, an 80% chance for lungs to reject, is that we're talking about, yes,
Stoney
the ones that aren't are the filters, the ones that actually work and do something. You know, the muscles seem like they have a harder time sticking to it. The
Jason
waiting list for each one is how long we'll have to wait to receive a transplant. Kidneys, five years a liver, 11 months heart, four months a lung, four months kidney pain. Pancreas 1.5 years, and pancreas two years. What
Ian
was the first one? He
Jason
said for five years, kidney, kidney. So if you need a kidney, you're the average is about five year way out. Yeah, that's why they mentioned that most people die waiting
Stoney
for that means you're on possibly dialysis, right? Trying to filter your blood, because the kidney is what filters the blood
Ian
for you. Man, that's wild.
Stoney
Well, there's a lot of call right now for some oversight of the OPOs, because when I first brought up this subject for us to discuss, I had just read an article where the OPO had gone in and was trying to take organs of somebody who wasn't dead yet. And I'm like, wait, what? And there's a lot of mismanagement going on by the OPOs, the you know, the organ procurement organizations, and there's even some Senate investigations into this right now because of the mismanagement of the OPOs. So, you know, there was a doctor at Memorial Hermann health system in Texas, you know where you said, is a pretty high one. He was accused of manipulating medical records and altering the Organ Sharing database to prevent patients from receiving transplant. Families of deceased patients sought legal action, claiming their loved ones were denied life saving organs due to these unethical actions. And this is one of the scandals that triggered the investigation by federal agencies leading to the suspension of the hospital's kidney and liver transplant program.
Ian
Wow, that's crazy. What? What
Jason
Oregon is least needed? Hmm, least needed? Least needed? Oh,
Stoney
I don't, I don't even know what's the appendix? That's it. Okay,
Jason
got it. It's the appendix, followed by tonsils, adenoids, gallbladder, uterus, yeah, but
Stoney
you lose your gallbladder and you're in trouble. Well, you ain't gonna be able to
Jason
eat grease, but you can't eat fat, the thymus gland and the spleen, wow, are the least Those
Ian
all sound like the organs that people try to get removed, like, on a Well,
Jason
I mean, it's if it has to be, you know, sometimes there's no choice of course,
Ian
right, right? I just think it's, I find it funny, is what I'm saying is, like, the fact that, you know, all the ones that people get removed on a regular basis are the ones that are least likely to get transplanted the appendix. I've heard. I didn't even know you could. I don't even know why you would transplant an appendix.
Stoney
You wouldn't transplant it, but you would get it removed. As I'm saying, people are getting them removed.
Jason
Yeah, it's a
Stoney
all that is, is a catch all. It's like in your sink, you have a little trap, and that catches stuff and allows the smells of the sewer not to come back in. Well, that's all the appendix does. Is the gum you eat, the fingernails you eat. Everything gets stuck there, and it just builds up a poison, and it becomes very septic, and when it finally ruptures, you're in trouble.
Jason
Yeah, reading here about this, looking at just total numbers here of it says they were 46 632, organ transplants performed from both living and deceased donors in 2023 this represents an 8.7% increase over 2022 and a 12.7% increase over 2021, which was the first year with more than 40,000 organ transplants. They were 39,679 organ transplants from deceased donors. So, hmm. Um, yeah, it's, uh, this would have been a good episode. We could have had somebody on as a guest. Oh, talk about this. Because I mean, listening to some of the TED talks about, obviously, people or medical doctors and stuff like that that are experts in this field. I was just fascinated at listening to the the potential future, and kind of harking back to my opening statement, if we can get to a point where we can basically mask these, these foreign proteins that come into the body via a new a new new Oregon and allow it to just operate the way it was intended. I mean, you talk about be a game changer, and there are, there is attempts right now that looks encouraging that that may happen in the future. And I'm a firm. Believer, probably in the next 20 years, I think that issue will be resolved, and I think transplanting will be a lot easier.
Stoney
We also kind of delved into that talking about the clones. Remember, if you could clone your own body to have organs right there,
Jason
to me, to me. And I was thinking about that and how I would kind of bring that up in this episode. I did it for you. Thank you. But actually, it's a little bit more complicated. I didn't realize that you're, if you like, for example, you took a some some cells from a developing organ at birth, and put it in some sort of petri dish or lab, or some sort of where it would in essence grow. They actually would have to do some things. In essence, they would have to without, you know, for a lack of a better way of explaining it, they would almost have to erect, somewhat of a a an erector set, so to speak, of the organ, because it doesn't just grow the way it needs to grow. There is some guiding force there that makes it actually grow into a heart, grow into to kidneys grow into a liver, so they would have to provide some sort of, in essence, some sort of attachment and guiding mechanism where the cell would grow the way it needs to grow, the as if it would grow in a human body, right Developing, which, to me, is, is absolutely amazing that you know, the more and more I was reading about this, the more just in awe of our own human biology, what it's taken to get where we were, just How complex human biology is, right? So, yeah, it's a, it's an incredible, incredible field. As I said, I would have loved to better have our listeners, have some, you know, we would have somebody here to really kind of dive into the real technical stuff that is really beyond our capabilities, other than what we can just read, you know, via open source on the internet, but I learned a lot just, you know, just researching for this, this episode, and just some of the challenges that people face with organ donation. But you know right now, it's, it's, it's, it's really a short term fix, right? It's not a long term fix, simply because of the the complications as time goes on. So beyond that, it's, it's still a fascinating, fascinating topic one of these days, interesting to see the future of this technology. Yeah, so
Stoney
interesting. Look at all that, huh?
Jason
Oh yeah. I mean, it's uh, like
Ian
I was saying before, like the statistics for this kind of stuff is interesting. It's daunting, though, because I'm obviously with anything medical, and you know, you have large sample sizes of people, you can really look at a lot of different facets of statistics and numbers and what it all means and that kind of stuff. So, yeah,
Jason
one organ donor can save up to eight lives, and one tissue donor can improve the lives of up to 100 other people. Wow. So if you donate, you are definitely, you're definitely saving somebody or making someone else's life a lot more you know a lot better.
Ian
So Well, all right, anything else you want to touch on before we wrap it up. Yeah, interesting, awesome. Well, for those of you out there who you know, who have listened before, you know how to reach out to us, retrospect, pod on, you know, all the different social medias where you can reach out and give us comments we have, as I was saying before, and I've said that the past couple episodes, we have the ability to comment on Spotify as well as YouTube, and I usually try and watch out for some comments coming in that way, where you can give us some little more short form responses. We also have the email address get offended together@gmail.com, where you could also give us some more long formed responses if the if the comment boxes don't allow you to fit all your opinions in there. And we have the website and the website as well. Yes, retrospect podcast.com Good news, as of last week, I was able to get us on Pandora. Yes, if anybody has wanted to listen to us on there and hasn't had the ability to, it was a bit of a process, but I finally, I think they were able, they were migrating. It over from some other situation, but I think it's on Pandora and Sirius XM, I think is the two
Jason
we Yeah, two I have, I was able to pull us up on Pandora. I have not been able to pull us up on serious at least yesterday. I was trying, I was having to look with it.
Ian
Maybe there's something in the back and I got to do, I look into it, but
Jason
Pandora, I was able to, yeah, I actually was listening to some of our stuff. Yeah, Pandora's, well,
Ian
if you again, if you wanted, if you listen to that platform, and you want, you wish that we were on there. Well, here we are. Here we are. Now we're on there. And with that being said Until next week, thank you so much for listening. Bye, bye, Goodbye everyone.
Jason
God bless
Stoney
organ donation saves 1000s of lives, yearly, but not without complications. With organ procurement organizations facing increasing scrutiny and systemic challenges, there's a clear need for oversight and change, yet ultimately, organ donation is an act of unparalleled generosity. It reminds us, in death, we can still offer the gift of life, and that's a power worth safeguarding through trust and action. Thank you for hanging out with us today. You're the best, peace.
Sweet. It was almost like, almost an hour on the dot, come on, really. I think it was. It was one of.