Transplant Recipient Dies From Rodent Virus Infected Kidney
The kidney was infected with a hard-to-detect virus, health officials said, which came from a 49-year-old homeless man who suffered irreversible brain damage and cardiac arrest.
The donor carried a germ called lymphocytic choriomenigitis virus, which is most often transmitted by rodents and usually unnoticed by healthy people who do not suffer anything more than flu-like symptoms, according to the newspaper.
The virus also killed three transplants patients in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 2005.
Organs perish quickly and they are tested for diseases such as AIDS, hepatitis and herpes, but not usually viruses such as lymphocytic choriomenigitis. And, since the demand for organs is so great, recipients will often take the organs of homeless people, the newspaper said.
Tags: homeless, kidney, transplant, virus
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Are we so hard up for organs that we are harvesting them from the homeless?!? The medical profession should know that the homeless are worst for organs. They tend to be junkies, alcoholics, and eat poorly. The doctors that harvested the organs from this homeless man should be used and the hospital should be sued too.
What has the country come to, when people dying of need for transplant organs, get their last best hope from the harvested remains of dying hobos and drunks and drug addicts off the street.
I would never knowingly accept an organ from a homeless person. Didn’t anyone think about the fact that they probably don’t live in the most sanitary of conditions? The ethics of using homeless people’s organs is questionable, if not downright despicable.
Sounds like the same virus that ultimately killed a relative a few years ago. He likely contracted it from rodent droppings in his mattress at a hunting cabin that was only used a few times a year. Doctors first said it was flu, then pneumonia. When it did not respond to treatment, they learned of his exposure. By then he was gone. Hopefully that will serve as a heads-up to others.
I used to have an organ donor card…when I was denied health insurance because of my weight, I decided helping a society of people who had casually decided my life was not worth saving if I became sick or injured was just me being a sucker.
My organs clearly weigh too much anyway…you guys wouldn’t want them.
I wonder how they got a bunch of homeless people (you know…people nobody would miss if something happened to them?) to sign organ donor cards, anyway?