Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Organ Transplants
Episode Date: December 16, 2014This week on Sawbones, Dr. Sydnee and Justin give the greatest gift of all. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net) ...
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Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion.
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Alright, time is about to books!
One, two, one, two, three, four! We came across a pharmacy with a sewing box blasted out.
We were sawed through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.
Some medicines, some medicines, the escalant macaque for the mouth Well, everybody welcome to saw bones marital tour of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy and I'm Sydney McAroy
It's a holiday season
Here we do and here we duck don't forget to pick up this mock and become around the gym. You know holiday season
That was that was beautiful. Thank you, Sid
I was hoping you would hop in and interrupt me there, but you're just oh no left me enough rope to hang myself I'm around the gym in a holiday season. That was beautiful. Thank you, Sid.
I was hoping you would hop in and interrupt me there,
but you're just left me enough rope to hang myself.
Yeah, no, if you wanna jump in with it like that,
I'm gonna let you keep going.
It's the holiday season.
Yeah, exciting.
I'm excited.
Cup full of cheer.
Yeah.
Or something.
Something, I mean, does cheer have, is it alcoholic?
Yeah, cheer is alcoholic.
I don't think there's any question about that.
Milk of humankind is absolutely alcoholic.
So cheer is, okay, then I am all for a cup of it.
Whassolier, I think Whassol is alcoholic.
I think it's all pretty much alcoholic.
That is not what our episode's about today,
but yes, I agree about that about the holidays.
I'm getting close to being done on my shopping.
I'm just going to get a few my shopping. I'm catching more.
Good for you.
Low is a stray items to get.
Well, we tend to give gifts as a pair these days.
That's true.
But you're still ahead of me,
because I still have to get gifts for you.
Oh, cool.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to.
Look at me.
You know, we're just 10 days out, me wanna.
Well, I mean, what do you get for the guy who has everything?
You've already
given me the greatest gift and your love and our daughter. Aw. That's sweet. Yeah, I'm good.
I'm I feel confident about my gifts this year. I feel good. So you're feeling really good about it.
I feel really good. Yeah. I think they're like the best gifts ever. Best gifts ever.
Well, you would be wrong. Well, I'm pretty sure. No, no, they are not the best gifts
that anybody's giving this holiday season.
Okay.
I'm pretty good.
Because I'm gonna give that award out
to one of our listeners.
We wrote us an email, his name is Adam.
And Adam.
This is Adam guy got that I don't got.
Well, it's more what he doesn't got soon.
Soon, it's one less kidney.
Because he's giving a kidney to a family member. Okay, that's pretty good. Okay, Adam doesn't got soon. Soon, it's one less kidney because he's giving a kidney
to a family member.
Okay, that's pretty good.
Okay Adam, you got me be on that front.
I think organ donation, that's probably the best.
I'm holding on to the bad boys.
I need both these bad boys.
Keep me running the optimal performance.
For all those horses next, you keep drinking down
the saw, they see them.
I need doubles, I need two.
That's a beverage for those of you who don't know.
Classic.
It's great.
Brandy.
Doesn't eat horses this night.
Brandy, better than ginger else, delicious.
Oh, so crisp.
You know what, wow, that's amazing.
Giving a kidney to somebody.
Yes, absolutely.
And he was interested in the history of organ transplant.
And I thought, you know, if he's giving the gift of one of his own organs,
the least I could do is give him the gift of a podcast about organ transplantation.
I think that that's more than fair.
I think you may even be getting the better end of that deal.
Definitely.
We are.
I don't think that this is equal to that.
But anyway, thank you, Adam.
Thank you for the topic.
And thank you for donating a kidney,
because that's awesome.
So Sydney, how did we start switching organs around?
Well, this is, as you may imagine,
a fairly newer concept.
Is it a newer concept or is it a newer thing
that we actually did without people dying? Okay, so it's a newer thing that we actually did without people dying?
Okay, so it's a newer thing that we can do successfully. Right. Okay. There was a this is like it's pretty early on so you'd be like, you know what?
I see his the part that those all those weird
bags that he has in his body. I know I need X amount of bags in my body to
push the liquids around in the humors and what have you?
Maybe I could put one of his bags into my body.
Well, yes, I mean, that is true, but in order to do that,
you would have to know which of those bags was dysfunctional.
So to know somebody needs a kidney,
you have to know they're in kidney failure.
Oh, okay, that's a good point, yeah.
You know, but you are right in the sense that the concept
that if one of the squishy structures in your body seem
to be going afoul, that you could replace it with somebody else's is not new.
The ancient Greeks were said to have attempted organ transplantation, but a lot of this is
probably just myth.
I don't think that anyone actually did this just simply because the surgical techniques
wouldn't even been in place.
So even if you could understand like,
mm, this person needs a kidney,
you only need one kidney,
because that was the other step, right?
Like if you're gonna take an organ from somebody,
you'd have to understand they didn't need it.
Mm-hmm.
Or I guess you could take it from a dead person.
It was. Yeah.
And then you'd have to know how to put it in there
and make it work.
And they were at least-
And they were infected in the process.
Exactly. And there was no anesthesia. So we've talked about this before. There
weren't a ton of surgeries before we could knock people out during surgeries.
Yeah. There was a story of an ancient Chinese physician,
Pian Qiao, who exchanged hearts between two men, one man, and this is how he's described, has a strong spirit, but a weak will, and the other man has a strong will, but a weak spirit.
And so he exchanged their hearts in order to achieve balance. Oh, but, uh, well, okay. So that leaves us with one really fierce sweet dude, and one dude who's...
...let's just sort of like...
...and his most strong will.
How does he know where will is anyway?
Well, that's a good question. Which one was he trying to switch? The spirit or the will?
I almost, it's almost enough for me to file this one under unsubstantious
I think I think this myth is busted in the reading of it there might have been a strong
Wild man and a weak willed man, but at the end we can all agree that there were just two dead guys
With no hearts with no hearts and a gaping hole and a guy who'd realized he was in every's head
And she probably pags bags and get out of town, I guess that.
And I'm hoping it was arrested.
Like, and yeah, maybe?
Now, I am not a fan of telling, you know, I like, like, throwing shade on other doctors,
but this may be a malpractice case.
This would be a case where I'd have to say, look, look, I agree.
Listen, I applaud your enthusiasm and your zeal, but I think you made a mistake
somewhere. I'm going to say that didn't happen. Just like there was a story of two saints, Damian
and Cosmos, who were credited with replacing Justinian the Deacon, his leg. His leg became gangrenous,
and so there was an Ethiopian man who had died, and so they took his healthy leg and attached it to Justinian.
But then when you go into the story, the saints had been dead for a long time, so then there's a theory that they were from beyond the grave coaching somebody else.
Okay, so we're starting to get some supernatural elements in there.
It gets a little sketchy, so I'm gonna say it didn't happen.
I'm gonna put that under busted.
I think the first actual occurrence
of some sort of transplant was probably a skin graft.
And I think that counts.
That makes sense, sure.
Yeah, skin's the biggest organ, right?
There you go.
So we're gonna talk about skin graft first.
And this probably for the first time happened in India
in the second century BC
by Sushu Strah who was an Indian physician and
It was a an allograft. Do you know what that means?
nose
No, you're leaving. See you're reading ahead and trying to sound smart and you got it wrong
Dang it. You're right. I you're right. No, I don't know. It was from the donor's own body. Okay.
Which is probably why it worked.
And what body part was it from?
They, he actually, what he did is he took skin from the forehead
and stretched it down over the nose.
So yeah, I knew what's nose related.
I had a sense that it was related to the nose somehow.
It was somehow, somehow.
So I know.
I thought.
I mean, it's good that you can read still.
Yeah, I haven't lost that essential skill.
It was for a nose reconstruction.
I believe the patient had lost their nose.
I think it was a punishment at the time.
You could get your nose cut off and then it happened in battle.
I don't remember which one.
It was a traumatic nose removal.
As opposed to sort of a cash nose removal.
Well, as opposed to...
In BD, man, didn't smell that much stuff anyway.
Never liked it.
We're going to talk a lot about syphilis destroying noses, so now you're going to feel silly.
I doubtful, but go on.
It was some sort of traumatic nasal amputation.
So he reconstructed it by stretching the skin down from the forehead,
but leaving it still attached there so you would still have blood supply.
Perfect. Okay. Gotcha.
He also performs skin grafts by removing a strip of skin from your butt and putting it on your face.
Nice. You were a butt head. Butt face.
Butt face. Forever. I'm pretty impressive. We understood blood supply though. That's pretty good.
forever. I'm pretty impressive. We understood blood supply though. That's pretty good. It's interesting because that's one of the the keys to you know organ transplantation in general but definitely
skin grafting which wouldn't necessarily be easy to figure out if you didn't know that stuff yet.
Right. But it seems to have been figured out pretty quickly that and the way to do the surgery
were not the big barriers. So there are three things to consider right? Right. We need to get the surgery, we're not the big barriers. So there are three things to consider, right?
Right. We need to get the organ from somebody or the tissue. So either, you know, like a skin graft,
it could be from the person, but if it's a kidney, obviously, it's got to be from somebody else.
You've got to get it into the host correctly. So you got things like blood supply that you're
considering and how to hook it up, so to speak. Give it all plugged in. Like a new VCR. Get the HDMI cord, just the right place.
Exactly, and there's the, now when you plug things into TVs.
Yes.
Do you still use like the red and the yellow and the white cords?
It's called RCA, there aren't a lot of,
not a lot of devices use that still.
Because the last time I think I hope something up
It was with something I can never know if that's component or composite. I think that's composite and then the red blue green
White red that's is
Yellow there's a yellow one too, right?
Yeah, well, no, not if you're doing red green and blue because that's for HD
But most people just about but HDMI's what you see usually. No. So basically organs come with
HDMI cords and basically make sure you get them in the right
colored. Basically, holes in the body. Now remember just,
there's no colors with HDMI cord. Just the one black
cord. I don't think bodies can use HDMI even. We're not
equipped for that. No, we're not equipped for that. We're
two last gen. That'll be next gen. We're still cathode ray tube
bodies. So you got to get it in there correctly. Obviously,
we don't know how. And then the final thing which took us the
longest figure out was you got to prevent rejection. So if
you're taking an organ from one person to add out, please tell
middle school me because I I did not do well with it.
I'm so your Debbie downer moment Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, idea is there. And there were enough people, even though we talked about this in the episode about cadavers
and the resurrectionists and all that, that even though there were large swaths of history
where it wasn't okay to dissect people, everybody totally was.
All the time.
They were, they were dissecting people, so they were figuring this stuff out. And, and as far as the supply of organs, well, we didn't know that it was a problem to take
them from dead bodies at the time. So, as we have talked about before, we have a long history of
taking things from dead people. So, finding a donor wasn't really the problem.
Yeah. The big problem was that we just didn't understand rejection.
And so this is why even though way, way back,
we understood this concept.
It isn't until the 1900s that we really succeed in doing it.
So the first transplant that was successful is in 1905
and that in what is now the Czech Republic
and it was a cornea transplant.
Wow, that seems super delicate.
Of all the things you would,
I was like, this is like the heart.
That seems pretty easy to figure out,
but I guess the heart is maybe harder
because it dies quicker or something.
Like maybe a liver or kidney,
those just seem like bags.
Well, you've also got to consider the patient,
somebody, you know, in got to consider the patient,
somebody, you know, in order to do a transplant, you know, you take something out,
you put something in.
Right.
When you're putting in a cornea,
you're not, your patient's not in jeopardy the whole time.
Okay, so you're...
If you're trying to reconstruct a heart valve,
and you do it wrong, or you take too long.
If you're still trying to figure this out,
like you might as well try something,
it's not gonna kill you.
Right.
If it goes sideways, that makes sense.
I mean, that's pretty dicey,
because I mean, in order to, you know, at the time,
for all they knew to put in a new liver,
you have to take the old liver out,
and so then you're kind of on the clock.
You do have to take the old liver out, right?
You can't just leave, leave it in there,
and work around it.
It's interesting, just to skip the head a little bit,
but when you're doing a kidney transplant,
you actually don't have to take the bad kidney out.
What are you doing with it?
The new kidney goes in a different place.
It goes in a different location in the pelvis.
How could that be?
It just, it works better that way.
You tell me that it helps up to the blood supply.
Oh, my body, where a kidney.
There is a place where a kidney would fit
and we figured out that,
I think it's unnecessary at that point
to take the bad kid.
It's not gonna do anything, it's just there.
I don't want to do anything.
I'm not gonna say there aren't situations
where it is you're supposed to remove a kidney
if certain diseases, blah, blah, blah.
But for the most part, if you just,
your renal failure, you need a new kidney,
you can just kind of pop it in.
That's wild. Yeah. That's wild.
It is. I didn't see that they take it. I don't, it's hard enough to lose weight.
I don't need, I don't need an extra kidney in there.
We've, we've had this debate before actually, as a medical team, when surgeons were
planning on removing organs, and we've asked why are you removing it?
And they've said because it doesn't work and it's like
Well, you don't have to remove it. Oh, I'm a very surgical
You can tell that I'm I'm in the medical end and not the surgical end of the spectrum because I
Sorry, I didn't know I thought go ahead with what you're saying
I just don't want the kidney in there get that back back. Get that back kid out. So anyway, the corneal transplant, there had been the,
I guess the first one.
What would it rot?
What would it like rot in there?
The kidney?
No.
Why would it rot?
Because don't you have to disconnect it?
Why?
You have to disconnect now.
It doesn't work.
I'm plug it.
No.
Where are you hooking new kid me up there?
It's safe and you it's just a different place in the vascular. I think you're trolling me. I think this is a
A-Colour. Look up pictures of kidney transplants. I know I'm good. If you look at it. It's on this holiday. I'm alright.
Anyway, there had been a corneal transplant 68 years before this one, but it was in a gazelle, so I guess we don't count it.
No, those are barely people.
I don't know.
But that gazelle could see so well.
Did we transplant that from a human?
No.
Okay.
It was from a gazelle.
As far as I know, there was no human in it.
It was probably gazelle the gazelle.
Right.
It was practicing.
Poor gazelles.
How do you choose a gazelle?
You find the one that seems to be tripping a lot.
So he needs a new coordinate.
No, I mean like, of all animals.
Like, aren't they fast?
Don't you have to catch them?
They have.
They're fast, but that makes sight
visual problems very easy to spot.
You see the one who's like, kind of taking his time.
Well, that rock feels loose.
You're the one who keeps taking off running and smashing into trees.
Right. That guy needs a new cornea.
The first, so I guess that would be considered like a tissue transplant. The first kind of
organ transplant, so to speak, was was part of a thyroid. Again, it wasn't a whole thyroid,
but part of it was transplanted in 1883, and this was because the Swiss physician
who discovered a lot about thyroid disease,
who understood, I think he won a Nobel Prize,
Coker, I believe, who won a Nobel Prize
for thyroid disease issues,
understood that a goiter was bad.
So you know, goiter is like when you're thyroid gling,
it's all big right there in the front of your throat.
Right, you know what I'm talking about?
Adam's apple, right? Is it the Adam's apple? The goiter is like when your thyroid gland gets all big right there in the front of your throat. I'm talking about.
Adam's apple.
Right?
So the Adam's apple?
No.
But it's a thyroid.
Okay.
Yeah.
But same area.
Yes.
Same area.
Okay.
Good.
Fine.
No, you're fine.
So he removed the thyroid that had goiters.
So he would remove the whole gland.
Okay.
But once your gland, the whole thyroid gland is gone, you get hypothyroidism because you
don't make thyroid hormones anymore.
Because you need that.
And so, exactly.
And he would recognize that every time he did this, these people would develop this syndrome
that we now know is hypothyroidism.
So he would put some thyroid tissue back in people and it would fix it.
From where?
You know, I don't know.
I don't know where he got it.
I just read that he put it back in.
I don't know if he would like,
like once he figured it out,
he could take the thyroid out
and then remove just a little bit of the tissue
and then put it back in.
You know what I mean?
Okay.
Is that a transplant though, really?
If it's from the same person?
Yeah.
So wait, that's-
I talked about skin grafting from the same person.
So wait, that's the first organ transplant.
So to speak.
And that's 1883.
Yes.
So how was the first human transplant in 1905?
Well, I think it was because it wasn't the whole organ.
Okay, well that makes sense.
Fair enough.
All right, gotcha.
If you look at a timeline,
most people cite 1905 is the big breakthrough.
Gotcha.
It wasn't a whole thing.
It was just a little bit of the thyroid tissue.
And then from here on, we have, in the early 1900s,
everybody's crazy for transplantation.
A lot of the stuff they're doing is really practice.
They understand the concept, but they don't know how to do it.
So a lot of the transplants that were going on early on
were like dog transplants.
Dog to dog.
Dog to dog. Not dog to human.
That was attempted.
Oh man.
Once, I mean a lot of it, you know, people thought it was just, well, once we figure out
how to do the surgery, there was no idea, you know, we didn't understand like blood types
yet, so we certainly didn't understand tissue matches.
So it was, we figure out how to put a kidney in somebody, how to put an ovary, a pancreas, whatever, in somebody.
Once we're not gonna do the surgery,
what else is there to figure out?
You just do it and do it as fast as you can
so they don't bleed to death.
Yeah.
And they tried it with kidneys, with adrenal glands,
with ovaries, with testicles, with pancreas,
pancreas, pancreas.
The start of doing transplantation of blood vessels,
which improved their understanding of how to fix blood supply
to the organs.
They tried at one point to put rabbit kidneys into a patient.
No dice.
No.
I mean, it worked as in like they put them in there
and they hooked them up. But they're in there for sure, but but then they rejected them.
And I'm assuming that happened by the patient saying, no, thank you. These really aren't working out for me. I'd prefer you take them out now.
I mean, that would be better if that was how it is. Is that how rejection? Well, since's Christmas, we'll say that's the kind of rejection. Nice. And then he went on his merry way without his rabbit kidneys.
Perfect.
But they really weren't having much success.
So the one area that was expanding
was skin transplantation.
And mainly because they were taking skin graft off of a person
and putting back onto the same person somewhere else.
So you're kind of foregoing the problem of rejection.
And this is when I mentioned that syphilis would play a big role.
Like that. Because syphilis in stage syphilis can destroy the nose, the nasal tissue. And
so you would get these really deformed. And it was a mark that you were, you know, a
person who had syphilis. Like everybody would know your nose was deformed and everybody
would talk about you. Get away from that guy.
That person that's syphilis.
That's syphilis, do you?
So trying to reconstruct syphiletic noses
was definitely something you'd want done.
So hot right then.
Right.
And this was actually, we've talked about that show
the Nick before.
And if you watch it, then you've seen this.
One of the surgeries they would do
is they would take a flap of skin from like your inner arm
and cut it partially off and then attach it to your face.
You're kidding. And then you would have to walk around with your arm kind of like right over your head and the skin attached from your arm to your nose. Oh, that's brutal.
While it grew, because they understood blood supply, right? So they knew that just taking a big
hunk of skin off of the arm and slapping it on the face wouldn't work.
So they waited until the graft
like took to the skin of the face.
And this would take weeks, months
that you'd walk around with your arm.
Your nose has to be jacked.
Yeah.
Oh, that hurts me so I'm thinking about.
Oh, that's so gritty.
And it's from your inner arm.
So gritty.
You look like a
You look like a deodorant commercial 24 hours day
for it all
They also I thought this was interesting they were experimenting with different kinds of skin grafts
And one was known in the split graft and it was purely because the tools they used what they derived from the ones
They used for splitting leather in a harness shop
Wow sounded a little intense.
Yeah, a little brutal.
Like, hey, you know what, this would be great for.
Good way.
Good way.
Good way.
Good way.
Buffalo bill.
That's nice.
I'll put some lotion on my skin.
So what came next, Sydney?
Well, I'm going to tell you that real quick, Justin.
But before we hit there, let's head down to the billing department real quick. Let's go
All right, Sid. So how did we overcome the next hurdle in this because obviously we still had miles to go on
Transplants exactly so over the next and like I said a lot of this was done from you know
I said the first transplant was 1905
And when we get to some really successful stuff. It's in the 1950s
So relatively recently that we've sort of pieced all this together exactly and that's as we began to understand
Rejection was a big thing the idea that there was something inherent to our body that that recognized foreign tissue and would attack it
Unless sometimes it matched.
And we were trying to piece together why did it match, sometimes why it didn't.
The other things that also played a role were the development of kidney dialysis for one,
because I mean, part of this is if somebody's organ is failing, you have to keep them alive
long enough to get the transplant to them. And so before we develop things like kidney dialysis or later like the heart
lung machine, how were we able to keep people alive without these organs, or
keep, or preserve the organ until we could get it in the person. And
transportation played a role here too.
Couldn't get the organ to the person fast enough. Before the organ died so to
speak. So anyway in 1954, the first successful kidney transplant was performed.
And successful, I mean that both people lived after work.
How do we pull it off?
They were twins, identical twins.
Oh, and to this day, the only people that can get organ transplants are twins.
That's going to do it for us.
Nope, wait, nope.
You got this episode of the Sal bones. No, no. Congratulations twins. That's going to do it for us. Nope, wait, nope. You're on this episode of Sobhons.
No, no.
Congratulations, twins.
Nope, that's not true.
Great news for twins on the new episode of Sobhons.
That is not true.
Tell them what it is.
I mean, certainly that makes it easier, but no.
We figured out from the fact that that was successful, that immunosuppression is necessary
in order to transplant organs that aren't in identical twins.
So basically, we got to stop your immune system from attacking the foreign organ.
Initially, we did this with like radiation, which is pretty bad. Yeah, not great.
Fry their immune system in order to not attack the organ, which was good that they didn't attack
the organ, but bad with all the side effects radiation.
Eventually, we understood that matching, you could find people who had the same sort of
markers and tissue markers and things, and that we could match organ to organ to reduce
the rejection, and then we could also use steroids.
We're a big breakthrough to reduce the immune response to the organ.
And then as the years go on, they're more complicated immunosuppropriate.
Do you know how matching works?
Do you know, I mean, do you personally, I know that's not really your field, but.
Well, I mean, a lot of it is just taking like your blood cells and like running them
through looking for different markers on their surfaces.
Yeah.
And just, you know, coming up with like a profile of, of, I don't know, different, like like running them through looking for different markers on their surfaces. They're just a match.
Yeah.
Coming up with a profile of different proteins on the surface of your cells.
That's basically all it is.
But I don't know.
It's different organ to organ and depending on what you're transplanting and that kind
of thing.
Sure.
It's the same idea as blood matching, only much more, many more factors you have to control for.
After that, after we figured out that part of it, it was followed by a pancreatic transplant,
liver transplant, heart transplant, this is on the 60s, we figured all this out.
Nice.
And by the 80s, we transplanted lungs.
That's amazing. That happened in my lifetime.
That's wild.
It is, It is wild because
You know, this was this was a huge life-saving breakthrough and the fact that we ever figured out that the fact that we ever figured out Rejection is still kind of amazing to me. Yeah
Thanks to this this led to a lot of ethical issues
so you can take an organ like a paired, like a kidney from a living, willing donor,
but when can you from the deceased?
We began to understand that you couldn't take kidneys out of somebody who'd been dead for,
you know, three weeks.
Right.
And transplant them.
So when is somebody, when is it okay to take it from somebody?
Which is more a practical question than an ethical one, I guess.
Well, I mean, there's also brought in the whole idea
of like brain death and that kind of thing,
which complicated things.
And then also the buying and selling of organs
became an issue at this point.
So I think we've all heard the like horror stories
of people waking up in bathtubs
filled with ice and that kind of thing.
Yeah.
And so that began to enter into the question.
And as a result, in some countries, they've actually legalized the cell of organs.
That's a cool way to inject your economy with some them in vigor, I guess.
It's really, I read that there are some small communities where half of the population
only has one kidney because they've already sold their other one.
In the land of people with one kidney, the male with two kidneys is king.
And you only get, I think this is kind of cheap.
You only get like between $9,000 and $1,200 US.
I don't know, just wanted to.
Just sellin' a kidney.
That miserable, terrible horrifying sad statistic.
And I actually wanted to refresh it just by one to have it.
Just to invest in kidney.
Just in case. I'm gonna say no. Okay, fair one to have it just to invest in kids just in case
I'm gonna say no, okay, fair enough. Well, where would we keep it? No, we have no room our house is overflowing
I'm per's everywhere
There's also a sad history of prisoners who were encouraged to donate organs in exchange for
Decreased sentencing, which of course is illegal. You can't do that. Prisoners are not allowed to agree to that actually. We consider them
They're you know, they'd be easily coerced so they can't agree to a transplant
Listen, our organs is evil. They got evil in sad home. They're cursed. It's a cursed liver. You got you out of her man on death row
It's cursed. You don't want that bad liver. It's cursed. It's like that. No, that's not that
never mind. Another great anecdote from Sabons. Those hosts are always born out of the best pop culture
ever. I had a reference in a movie. No, never mind. I was wrong. But the first you are right and the first testicle transplant was...
Well thank God you can transplant testicles, I've been wondering this whole time and finally
I have my answer.
It was from a convicted murderer.
Evil ball.
And his sentence was...
Evil ball.
He's an actually a kid which is interesting because it was like I read the headline, it was
like first child born of
Transplanted testicle from convicted murder that's the plot of the first child's play movie. You'll watch it again
It's probably been a while
His sentence was decreased
But it wasn't because of the transplant it was already gonna be but they kind of insinuated to him
They lied to him and told him that it was related to get him to donate
That's the obviar conversation afterwards.
And we go through this file.
Some people got in trouble.
And let me just say on a side note, because we kind of brush over this, but as far as the
selling of organs, so in the US, we consider that, well, one illegal and two unethical.
But there are some people who write papers in support saying that because it would take such a small percentage of the population
to sell their kidneys to eliminate the transplant waiting list.
And so then there's this argument.
Is it wrong?
That's a tough one.
I think I leave that to smarter people than myself.
I don't know.
It's a very dicey question.
Yeah.
You've got needy people on both sides of this.
Yeah.
So anyway, as we go into the 2000s, we are doing all kinds of transplants.
Arms, legs, faces, I think everybody remembers that.
The first face transplant was a big deal in the news.
There was a penis transplant done.
In 1998, the first hand transplant was done.
And it actually, in 2001, they had it removed.
Why?
Psychological rejection.
It was evil.
The worst, the worst hand.
I knew it.
Guy felt detached and removed from it,
and like it wasn't part of him,
and he couldn't handle it, and he wanted it off.
That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life.
It gets weirder.
2006, the first penis transplant was done.
Two weeks later, how did it remove due to his wife's psychological rejection of the organ?
Where do they get it?
What do you mean?
I mean, somebody who was, somebody was dead, you know, well, I'm sorry.
I don't know.
I need that well.
What do you think?
I don't.
He was alive.
And they were like, I don't need this anymore.
I just need to confirm before like, I just don't know why we're casting dispersions on
this woman for not wanting to have relations with Tim Burton's, the corpse penis.
Well, I understand and I can see where that would happen.
I'm just saying that that's love.
Okay.
Can you imagine?
Smirral.
Honey, I need you to.
Dear.
I know that you had a, because you did, you had a tragic accident lost part of his penis.
Got more penis, got more penis got new penis additional
penis got who to it maybe extra I don't know I don't know the I
don't know the compare penis penis second chance penis and then she
said listen if you really love me you'll go back to being the man
with no penis any debt that poor guy how much do you think he
was enjoying being able to pee without it looking like an exploding
water balloon?
Probably a lot, right?
That poor fella.
I'm sad.
I know.
I'm sad.
It's sad all around, but he decided he opted out of the penis.
I'll take his oath.
There's got to be a few people who are like, I would have taken his penis.
I could use one.
Maybe more, maybe the extra.
And maybe, as long as you got it.
It's actually really complicated to do that too.
I'm sure that you know there was like a surgeon
who was like, that took me hours.
I stared at this man's penis for the better part of the day.
I thought this was a really cool
and made me feel good about humanity fact.
In 2011, are you familiar with the concept of like an organ transplant chain?
What that means?
Not really.
So a lot of the time, you may have somebody in your family who needs a kidney, but none
of the family members are tissue matches.
So you have willing donors, but they don't match the person who needs the kidney.
So they start looking around for other people who may be a match for you who maybe do need your kidney and
maybe they have a family member who would be a match for your loved one.
Kind of wheeling and dealing. Yeah, and so they set up these transplant chains by finding like people and
Yeah, and so they set up these transplant chains by finding like people and family members and connecting everybody and in
2011 the longest organ transplant chain was completed. It involved 60 people
Wow 30 kidneys were transplanted that actually stretched into 2012 into 2011 to 2012
17 hospitals 11 states
Pain for 30 people got I know Isn't that amazing? That is amazing.
Folks, thank you so much for listening to our program.
Sobhones, we hope you've had some fun listening to it,
because I know you've had a lot of fun.
And thank you again, Adam, for your great topic,
and for doing something so selfless.
Yeah.
And we'll be thinking about you.
Good luck.
I hope everything goes well for you and your loved one.
Thanks to people tweeting about the show like Amanda gave Bullard Shay
Haley Christmas Cory Dutson Mina
Ticker professional nerd Jess Hill Katie Winchester
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Lidormus so many, you're really the best.
We're at sawbounds on Twitter, so it's not hard to remember.
You just, you know, find us there and follow us and share and stuff.
It's the best.
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If you guys have topic suggestions, please email us.
We are doing a live show on this Sunday
at seven o'clock, doors open at seven,
so it starts today, right here in Huntington West, Virginia
in our hometown.
There's still tickets available.
So if you wanna go to bit.ly-forod-slash-candle-nights-live, we're opening for my brother, my brother, me, which I'm also a part of, but we're going to do that show.
It's going to be fun.
Sid, do you want to say what the topic is?
Okay. So do you want to keep it a super-seagrass surprise?
I want to keep it a super-seagrass surprise.
All right. Well, you'll have to find that out.
If you want to come out again. That show is
Huntington City Hall and get a bit.OF4 slash candle nights live. Want to say thanks to the maximum
fun network for having us as a part of their vast family of programming. I want to recommend
Bullseye this week. It's a pop culture discussion show. They had an amazing show with Chris Rock and
John Cleese on a single episode. So that was really great. Well worth a listen. You can find that
maximumfun.org. I have folks. I think that's going to do it for us. Thank you so much for listening.
Until next Tuesday, I'm Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney Mc Sydney Mac. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!
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