Organ Donors

Twenty-nine athletes who have received a donated organ or have donated one will represent Maryland in the 2012 Transplant Games of America , an annual awareness raising event. The games aim to highlight the importance of organ and tissue donation, while also celebrating the lives or donors and recipients, according to event organizers. This year, the multi-sport competition will be held in Grand Rapids, Mich., July 28-31. The local competitors, in their 30s, 40, 50s and 60s, will compete on behalf of Donate Life Maryland , the nonprofit group that maintains the state's donor registry through a partnership with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

John Jenkins knows the heartache of losing a child. But he and six other families have learned firsthand that such tragic deaths needn't be in vain. Jenkins, 56, lost his 20-year-old son 18 years ago to a motorcycle accident. But when 21-year old Joshua L. Aversano died after being struck by a car last year, Jenkins was one of six people whose lives were dramatically changed by the tragedy. Jenkins had been waiting more than two years for a new heart. Doctors were able to harvest not just Aversano's heart, but his liver, kidneys, pancreas and a lung, which also went to waiting patients.

DANIEL CANAL is the 13-year-old who, since May, has had 12 organs transplanted into his body. He's now out of the medical woods and eating his first solid food -- chicken tenders and French fries from Burger King.Not long ago, transplanting a kidney from one body into another was an awesome event. Today, however, it's a fairly routine procedure: 11,000 kidneys were transplanted last year. Unfortunately, as the number of lives that can be saved by organ transplants continues to rise, so do the number of people who die because an organ cannot be found in time.

The Air Force service member infected with rabies before his organs were transplanted into several patients — including one Marylander who died — was thought previously to have been poisoned by a type of fish. Kathy Giery, a director at LifeQuest Organ Recovery Services in Gainesville, Fla., said Monday that the organ recovery service oversaw the transplant process from the rabies-infected donor. The hospital where the donor died told the organ service the person was poisoned by ciguatera, a toxin found in certain kinds of fish, she said.

Better care for accidents victims, increased seat belt use and tougher drunken driving laws have saved more lives, but not without a cost -- fewer organ donors for patients needing transplants.Because the number of typical donors of the past -- the 18- to 35-year-old accident victims -- is decreasing, officials at Johns Hopkins Hospital are stepping up efforts to find more people willing to donate organs and are considering elderly donors who might not have been candidates before.The hospital's efforts to increase public awareness about the need for organ donors includes an education program for religious leaders to inform them about ways they can spread the word among their congregations.

The head of the state's organ-transplant center has a request for families during this holiday season: Discuss with your loved ones the possibility of donating your organs.You could save someone's life.Mark Reiner, executive director of the Transplant Resource Center of Maryland, says nearly 300 Marylanders are on a waiting list for organ donations.He says about 23,000 people are on a waiting list nationwide at a time when the pool of potential donors is diminishing because of improved trauma care and stricter safety laws, resulting in fewer accident-related deaths.

After spending yesterday morning in church, Roxanne King felt enlightened - but not in the typical Sunday kind of way. At her West Baltimore church, St. James Episcopal, King listened to an appeal for blacks to consider becoming organ donors. She heard about the long lists of sick people waiting for livers, kidneys and hearts. And she heard how many of those people are African-American. Before all that, King said, there was "no way" she'd have been a donor. And she's still not sure. The difference is that now she's willing to think about it. "Right now there is a possibility," she said.

Angela McLain said her younger brother "was a giving man" and wouldn't have had it any other way. So when Antwoine McLain died at the age of 21 in July - a homicide victim, shot in the head while driving in Northeast Baltimore - his family decided to donate most of his organs. "It was a donation, a gift of love," said his 39-year-old sister, who joined hundreds of other people at a ceremony yesterday honoring the many Maryland organ donors. The gathering has grown since the first one held in 1996, when 50 people showed up, according to officials of the sponsoring Transplant Resource Center of Maryland.

I would like to respond to Dan Rodricks ' column on taking DNA samples from people who are arrested ("DNA: Why wait for an arrest?" May 3). I support his opinion, but I think he could have included more reasons, especially for a general gathering of DNA. If all of us gave samples, the medical world would benefit tremendously. Close matching organ donors could be located immediately. Untold information could ease the tracking of diseases from the common cold to virulent cancers.

Editor: Have you or your family ever considered the possibility of organ donation? It is not a subject that is easily discussed, but it is a very important issue and one that should be shared with all members of your family. There are 115,662 people waiting for an organ as of the end of July 2012, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Every 11 minutes someone else is added to the organ transplant waiting list. One organ donor can save up to 50 people, by donating internal organs (kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines and lungs)

Editor: Have you or your family ever considered the possibility of organ donation? It is not a subject that is easily discussed, but it is a very important issue and one that should be shared with all members of your family. There are 115,662 people waiting for an organ as of the end of July 2012, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Every 11 minutes someone else is added to the organ transplant waiting list. One organ donor can save up to 50 people, by donating internal organs (kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines and lungs)

A local donor advocacy group is hoping a handsome soccer star will convince Latinos to donate their organs. Donate Life Maryland is bringing DC United soccer player Andy Najar to Baltimore this weekend to speak about the need for Latinos to donate organs, tissue and corneas. More than 20,000 Latinos living in the U.S. are waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, according to Donate Life Maryland.  About 18 Americans of all ethnicities die each day due to lack of organ donors.

Twenty-nine athletes who have received a donated organ or have donated one will represent Maryland in the 2012 Transplant Games of America , an annual awareness raising event. The games aim to highlight the importance of organ and tissue donation, while also celebrating the lives or donors and recipients, according to event organizers. This year, the multi-sport competition will be held in Grand Rapids, Mich., July 28-31. The local competitors, in their 30s, 40, 50s and 60s, will compete on behalf of Donate Life Maryland , the nonprofit group that maintains the state's donor registry through a partnership with the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

It's every parent's worst nightmare: the call that comes in the middle of the night or interrupts a workday. It's the police or hospital calling to say that your child is in critical condition. As an emergency medicine physician, sometimes I have been the one to break such news, and it never gets easier. Two years ago, a good friend received that call. A car accident had left her teenage son brain dead. At the heartbreaking memorial service, my friend shared the bittersweet comfort she and her family derived knowing that a part of her son lived on in the many people he helped through the donation of his organs.

I would like to respond to Dan Rodricks ' column on taking DNA samples from people who are arrested ("DNA: Why wait for an arrest?" May 3). I support his opinion, but I think he could have included more reasons, especially for a general gathering of DNA. If all of us gave samples, the medical world would benefit tremendously. Close matching organ donors could be located immediately. Untold information could ease the tracking of diseases from the common cold to virulent cancers.

Six kidney patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital received new organs from six unrelated living donors Saturday in what the chief surgeon called the nation's first six-way "domino" kidney swap. Nearly 100 medical professionals took part in the transplants, which began simultaneously in different operating rooms. Surgery stretched over 13 hours. All 12 donors and recipients were listed in good condition yesterday, a hospital spokesman said. Some had gone home while others were still recovering in the hospital.

Although they constitute only 13 percent of the U.S. population, African-Ameri-cans account for 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, according to the 2002 report by the U.S. Renal Data System. Diabetes is the main clinical cause of renal failure, followed by hypertension. A family history of kidney disease also puts people at risk, says Andrew Levey, professor of medicine at Tufts School of Medicine and chief of nephrology at the New England Medical Center of Boston. "Whenever there are racial differences [in a disease]

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.

Are you a registered organ donor? If so, you should get a break. But instead you're getting the shaft. Now registered organ donors around the United States are uniting to get fair treatment. If you've agreed to donate your organs when you die, your generosity can save lives. Last year in the United States, about 22,000 people received organs transplanted from deceased donors. But registered organ donors who need transplants are treated no better than people who have declined to donate their organs when they die. As a result, every year, thousands of registered organ donors die waiting for transplants when the organs that could have saved their lives are given to nondonors.

A more complete accounting asked I would like to thank The Sun for Larry Carson's June 14 article "Democrats back off on rezoning change." Howard County's ability to manage growth with the zoning process will affect every county resident and is a very important issue for the upcoming elections. I attended the COPE forum Monday evening, and the forum was both well-run and well-attended. I needed to read Mr. Carson's article very carefully to realize that he was describing the same event that I attended.