Limb Transplants -- Modern Miracle or Future Frankenstein? :: Biology Essays Research Papers

offshoot Transplants -- Modern Miracle or Future Frankenstein?We on the whole know that transmits save lives. Liver, heart, renal, and other organ transplants are hardly controversial. scarcely what happens when transplants do not save lives? What happens when they actually endanger them? At least twenty- whizz evanesces and arms have been transplanted since 1998 (and one in 1964) (1). Sure, the enhancive and consumptional value of having a new hand could seem same a miracle to those without hands or arms, but do these benefits outweigh the attempts?Limb attachments are not uncommon. Dr V Pathmanathan and his team, who transplanted a left arm onto violate Chong Lih Ying from her twin sister who had died at birth, had already performed over 300 such(prenominal) operations (2). The controversy occurs when the limb is not simply reattached, but is transplanted from one person to another. This is because limb transplant patients, like any other transplant patients, need to be given anti-rejection medication, immunosuppressive therapy (1), so that the luggage compartments immune placement does not recognize the new limbs tissue as foreign and unmake it (3). In fact, Chong Lih Ying was the only limb transplant patient not to gather immunosuppressive drugs. Because her arm was transplanted from her twin, there was very little risk of rejection (2).As the name suggests, immunosuppressant drugs given to limb transplant patients greatly impose the bodys immune system (4). This puts limb transplant patients at a more than greater risk of cancer, infections, and other disorders (5), as has been the case in renal and liver transplants (6). Even with these drugs, the patient still has a great risk of rejection. Six weeks after Jerry Fishers hand transplant, he had already experienced cardinal episodes of rejection, a common and expected occurrence in limb transplant patients (7). To avoid rejection, and to regain functions of the limb, limb transplant patie nts must follow a strict regime of intense physical therapy. During the period immediately front his hand transplant, Jerry Fisher underwent a two-hour physical therapy session six long time a week, as well as therapy exercises on his own each two hours (7). Even so, normal functions of the limb come slowly, and according to study results to date, a transplanted limb will never have the full function of a limb with which one was born (6). Transplant recipients must as well as undergo intense psychological therapy in order to view the hand as part of the self and not to associate it with the deceased body from which it came.