Scientist Doris Taylor explains how she and her team are creating bioengineered human hearts in their lab with the goal of one day eliminating the need for heart transplants.
Biased algorithms in health care can lead to inaccurate diagnoses and delayed treatment. Deciding which variables to include to achieve fair health outcomes depends on how you approach fairness.
Liver transplant waitlists can range from 30 days to over five years. Developing treatments that spur liver regeneration could help reduce demand for scarce organs.
China’s industrial-scale organ trafficking practice has been executing prisoners of conscience and using their organs for transplantation for decades. This is known as forced organ harvesting.
Patients with blood cancer undergoing stem cell transplantation have a high risk of complications. The bacteria in their gut, however, can help their immune system recover and fight infections.
The heart used in the first pig-human transplant was infected with a pig virus. This reveals that using other species as organ donors may not provide a solution for organ shortages.
New developments in organ transplants from animals show promise. However, there has been no public engagement about a potential risk. It may streamline a pathway to humans for new zoonotic diseases.
David Bennett owes a debt of gratitude, not only to the surgeon’s who saved his life but to Peter Medawar, the person who discovered why organs are rejected.
Printing organs could reduce the need for human donor organs. And 3D printed organs using a patient’s own cells would increase successful organ transplants by reducing the risk of rejection.
Deemed consent organ donation means that everyone is assumed to be an organ donor unless they opt out, but assuming consent raises some ethical issues.
New strategy helps build synthetic organs from scratch. This enabled the researchers to grow functioning liver tissue in the lab that could be transplanted into mice with liver disease.
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford