Organ Donation

NO STORY about the medical miracles of human organ transplants can skirt the great limitation on these lifesaving procedures: There are more potential recipients of organs than suitable donors.This imbalance is not new, and in some ways things have gotten better. Many people register their willingness to donate on their driver's license and new medicines have allowed the successful use of organs from a wider range of donors. Even so, most of the hard questions that still trouble ethicists about transplants stem from the shortage of donated organs.

Eighteen months after declaring it ethically acceptable to take organs for transplant from infants who were born with only a small part of the brain but are not brain dead, the American Medical Association has changed its policy.Last month, largely in response to criticism from its own ranks, the AMA "temporarily suspended" its approval of harvesting organs from such babies, whose condition, anencephaly, causes them to be born with only a brain stem, the part of the brain that controls heartbeat and breathing but not higher functions.

Less than two months after a transplant replaced his cancerous liver, Mickey Mantle is being treated for cancer that has spread to his lungs, doctors said yesterday, reopening questions about the fairness of the transplant process.Doctors at Baylor University Medical Center said if they had known the liver malignancy had spread, Mantle -- who waited only two days for a donor organ -- would not have received the transplant. But tests done at the time did not show any cancer outside the liver.

Washington. -- The trouble with the organ-transplant system is that it is based on altruism in a greedy and squeamish country -- a formidable combination when it comes to obtaining permission to extract hearts, lungs and kidneys of dead next-of-kin. As a result, organs from an estimated 10,000 suitable corpses go unused. Meanwhile, about 40,000 people are on waiting lists for hearts and livers at any one time, and a third of them eventually die for lack of organs.The number of needless deaths will inevitably increase as transplant techniques become more sophisticated and applicable to patients now considered too ill for the rigors of the procedure.

Edgewood Middle School students can now pedal their way to fitness on two Lifecycles, thanks to a donation by Healthy Harford Inc., a newly formed nonprofit Harford County health promotion organization. The two exercise machines, valued at $4,000, were presented to the school as the first activity of a planned pilot program with Harford County public schools.Healthy Harford Inc. was created this year as a coalition of private and not-for-profit businesses and public agencies with the goal of making Harford County the healthiest community in ** Maryland by 2000.

Monica Savage, a 13-year-old Columbia girl who is awaiting a heart transplant, had a wish come true last night when "Scotty," the engineer from the Starship Enterprise, was "beamed up" to her seventh-floor room at Johns Hopkins Hospital.James Doohan, who portrayed Scotty on the "Star Trek" television series and movies, visited the Owen Brown Middle School eighth-grader after appearing at a computer show yesterday at Timonium Fairgrounds."It was pretty neat," said Monica, who has been waiting 10 weeks for a new heart.

Every day, about nine Americans awaiting organ transplants die before a donor can be found.That grim fact is not likely to change soon. While waiting lists have nearly doubled since 1988, the donor pool has grown only slightly."

Dale Middleton will never forget May 24, 1992. It was a hot Memorial Day weekend and he had spent the afternoon buying plants.But the event that forever cemented the day's details in Mr. Middleton's memory was a telephone call informing him that a liver had become available for his transplant operation."

CROFTON -- Children played on the swings and slide, tossed balls and played games with clowns in funny outfits. Adults sat at picnic tables under trees, chatting as the aroma of hot dogs, hamburgers and steamed crabs filled the air.It was a traditional any-weekend American summer picnic, except in one detail: Many of the children and adults were the recipients of life-saving organ transplants -- livers, kidneys, hearts -- who had reunited for a day of...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Laura Campo and Justin Pearson hoped their baby's short and tortured life would bring a new definition of death, but the Florida Supreme Court has refused their wish and said Baby Theresa was indeed alive with only a stub of a brain.And with her being alive, the doomed baby's vital organs could not be taken from her to help save the lives of others, the court said.Ruling on an appeal filed while the nation debated the fate of the baby with no brain, Justice Gerald Kogan wrote yesterday for the unanimous court that "the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that [Baby Theresa]