The Devastating Allure of Medical Miracles

Transplants that improved lives rather than saved them posed a serious new ethical problem. Even today’s transplant drugs cause side effects ranging from passing nausea, dizziness, and weight loss to life-threatening conditions such as diabetes, infection, cancer, and kidney failure. In a 2003 study, up to 21 percent of transplant recipients experienced total renal failure within five years, forcing patients to have dialysis or a kidney transplant.

Most people readily accept such risks to get a new heart, lung, or liver: When the benefit is life itself, most find almost any cost bearable. But a hand transplant sharply changes this calculus. Is taking dangerous drugs for the rest of one’s life worth the satisfaction of tying a shoelace or moving a strand of hair from a child’s face? Such deeply personal questions test the boundaries of medical ethics.

The full Wired article can be viewed at this link.