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I am pretty squeamish around blood (even reading about it...), but this piece was so well written and engrossing and impactful that I made it all the way through in one shot. I had no idea that the bovie instrument (and broadly the entire field of electrosurgery [1]) was even a thing; I assumed it was anll still scalpels and such.

An incredible piece highlighting something people should know more about; thanks for posting this!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrosurgery

3 months agoby ykl

This is extraordinarily well written. Deep without being verbose. I thought I’d just peek at the link but it sucked me in.

3 months agoby el_benhameen

Surgeons had long learned sewing skills from their mothers, sisters, and wives. But in 1901, surgical trainee Alexis Carrel’s mother sent him to someone more gifted, Marie-Ann Leroudier, embroideress of Paris’s high society

I'm curious how important agility with hands are for modern surgeons compared to anatomy and medical knowledge in general. What makes a "great surgeon" today?

3 months agoby benmercer_dev

This is a very long and well written article. One fact I'd like to highlight is that the liver can regrow to the same size quite quickly if you choose to be a living liver donor.

3 months agoby DavidPeiffer

A good article, although I question why the author is talking about Iran and its organ market, if she's never been there and doesn't talk to anyone about it. Probably more complicated - and obviously exploitive, I mean, it's Iran - than she leads us to believe. Since it's Hacker News, cue the:

- "I'm outraged that death is brain death [or something else from the medical establishment] and not [some other crank folk definition]"

- "We should be able to pay for livers!" has never considered that he or his extended family could have been poor enough to be exploited by such a world

- "There's no organ exploitation in Asia" despite donation rates being so low and transplants being so high, the organs must be coming from somewhere

- "All transplant is exploitative" he says, until he or a family member needs a life-saving organ donation

3 months agoby doctorpangloss

This piece is absolutely a strong candidate for David Brooks' Sidney Awards. Thank you for sharing it.

3 months agoby hatmanstack

The part everyone leaves out is that the entire operation will contribute to the estates of every participant but one: the person who grew the organ. And, in fact, you will find that median donor estate is far lower than that of every other participant: the nurses, the OPO employees, the surgical team. They have the rarest part. They get nothing. And they’re poorer.

Matthew 25:29 comes to mind

> For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

3 months agoby renewiltord

A liver transplant kept someone close to me alive for a few more years, enough years to luckily and unexpectedly have a child, who is our magic child. Modern medicine is unbelievable. We live in extraordinary times.

3 months agoby telesilla

I can't avoid feeling admiration for each and every person involved in such a procedure.

And the most impressive thing I managed today is to test out a data and schema replication utility...

3 months agoby igleria

I'd just like to mention Roy Calne, transplant pioneer, humanist, skeptic. Only died last year, at 93.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Calne

> Sir Roy Yorke Calne FRS FRCS (30 December 1930 – 6 January 2024) was a British surgeon and pioneer in organ transplantation. He was part of the team that performed the first liver transplantation operation in Europe in 1968, the world's first liver, heart and lung transplantation in 1987, the first intestinal transplant in the UK in 1992 and the first successful combined stomach, intestine, pancreas, liver and kidney cluster transplantation in 1994.

3 months agoby emmelaich

Is there a reason why vents and respirators are always mixed up by laymen?

3 months agoby xattt

Excellent article. However, I do feel it is missing a more macabre side of the organ donation market in the US, especially around premature death categorization, in the below case, using "donation after circulatory death" instead of brain dead.

https://archive.is/Qq3Qw

3 months agoby Hasz

> There are two models for giving organs. The first, common in Europe, relies on “presumed consent.” Unless you explicitly opt out, your healthy organs belong to society, and you need special permission to be buried with them.

What? Not that i'm aware of.

3 months agoby siva7

starts disinfecting the garage

3 months agoby thenthenthen

Alternatively[0]:

MRS. BROWN: 'Ere. What's going on?

MAN: Uh, he's donating his liver, madam.

MR. BROWN: [screaming]

MRS. BROWN: Is this because he took out one of those silly cards?

[0] http://www.montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Meaning_of_Life/9....

3 months agoby KineticLensman