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An organ grinder and his monkey were banned from the streets on health and safety grounds. Paddy Cooke, 64, from Matlock in Derbyshire, and his stuffed toy Simon cannot perform until they complete a risk assessment. Ripley Town Council in Derbyshire decided to cancel the act who were due to perform in the town centre during the summer holidays. The decision was made by licensing bosses at Amber Valley Borough Council.

Patients awaiting organ transplants should decide in advance whether they’re willing to take substandard kidneys, livers and other organs, including those at risk for infectious diseases such as HIV or hepatitis C.

Kosovo/Albania: Investigate Postwar Abductions, Transfers to Albania Official Dismissals Premature (New York, May 5, 2008) – Additional information has emerged that bolsters allegations of abductions and cross-border transfers from Kosovo to Albania after the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, Human Rights Watch said today. The Kosovar and Albanian governments should open independent and transparent investigations to help resolve the fate of approximately 400 Serbs who went missing after the war. "Serious and credible allegations have emerged about horrible abuses in Kosovo and Albania after the war," said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch, who investigated human rights violations in...

Serb prisoners 'were stripped of their organs in Kosovo war' By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin and Malcolm Moore in Rome Last Updated: 10:28am BST 11/04/2008 Serb prisoners had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war, according to allegations in a new book by the world's best known war crimes prosecutor. Harry de Quetteville: Snippets from Carla Del Ponte's bookCarla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, said investigators found a house suspected of being a laboratory...

(CBS) Fifteen-year-old Alex Koehne died suddenly last year from what doctors thought was Meningitis. "He said, 'Mommy, am I going to die?', and I said, 'No baby, they're going to make you all better,' his mother, Lisa Koehne remembers. CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes reports his devastated parents took some solace in knowing that his death would give others new life. His mother says organ donation is very important to the family. "Alex always knew what he wanted." Alex's liver went to a 52-year-old man. His pancreas to a 36-year-old woman. His kidneys went to two different men, one 46...

JAKARTA (AFP) - - Indonesia's ex-dictator Suharto, who ruled the nation with an iron fist for more than three decades, suffered multiple organ failure on Friday and lost consciousness, his doctors said. Suharto, an authoritarian ruler for 32 years until he was forced from power in 1998, entered hospital a week ago suffering anaemia and low blood pressure, as well as heart, kidney and lung problems. He improved after dialysis and transfusions but his condition has since fluctuated, dramatically worsening late Friday as his extended family rushed to his bedside and the media crowded hospital corridors. "At 5:00pm (1000 GMT),...

Addi's Inflatable Minute brings us a wild musical instrument that's powered by a balloon and a foot pump and made out of PVC pipe and clothespins. Invented by Aaron Wendell, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Balloon Organ makes a mournful bagpipe-like sound we found quite pleasant. Each note is bendable, so a variety of satisfying and sometimes dissonant sounds ensue. Notice Fran, the balloon organist who is capable of extracting some rather arty sounds from the thing. Remarkable. [Gear Wire, via Boing Boing]

Four transplant recipients in Chicago contracted HIV from a high-risk organ donor whose infection went undetected in what hospital officials say is the first documented case of the virus being transmitted by organ donation in the U.S. in more than 20 years....

Hon David Kilgour and David Matas will be in Wellington Tuesday 11 September to highlight new evidence from their painstaking research into the practice of state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China. The former Canadian MP and the human rights lawyer have spent a year and a half researching and travelling in a global mission to raise awareness of the practice they conclude is "a form of evil yet to be seen on this planet." Kilgour and Matas released Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China in January this year. The report almost doubles...

The mother of a San Luis Obispo man who died after an attempted organ donation at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center last year claims she never gave hospital officials consent to take her son off life-support and was misinformed when agreeing to the organ harvest, according to a wrongful death lawsuit. Rosa Navarro also alleges in her June 29 civil lawsuit that a transplant surgeon misrepresented himself as her son’s doctor, an allegation the surgeon’s attorney strongly denies. She also said she agreed to the organ donation only because she believed her son had no chance of survival. Defendants in...

"Transplant tourism" on rise due to donor shortages By Laura MacInnis GENEVA - "Transplant tourism" is on the rise because organ donations are not keeping up with growing demand, especially for kidneys, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday. The United Nations agency said it was concerned about a rise in cases where people in countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and the Philippines were persuaded to sell their body parts to outsiders, mostly through a broker. The practice has increased over the past decade, said Luc Noel of the WHO's health technology and pharmaceuticals unit. "We believe 5 to...

A bionic eye implant that could help restore the sight of millions of blind people could be available to patients within two years. US researchers have been given the go-ahead to implant the prototype device in 50 to 75 patients. The Argus II system uses a spectacle-mounted camera to feed visual information to electrodes in the eye. Patients who tested less-advanced versions of the retinal implant were able to see light, shapes and movement. "What we are trying to do is take real-time images from a camera and convert them into tiny electrical pulses that would jump-start the otherwise...

CLEVELAND -- Prosecutors in Ohio's most populous county said they'll no longer block the local organ bank if it wants to remove organs from people who are not yet brain dead. Most organs are removed for donation only after the brain ceases all activity. But nationwide there has been growing use a more complicated procedure to remove the organs after the heart stops working. Three such donations were done in Akron last year. Cuyahoga County prosecutors for the past decade have clashed with the LifeBanc over removing organs after cardiac death. At one point they threatened homicide charges. But Prosecutor...

China to establish bureau to oversee organ transplants Mon Nov 27, 7:41 AM ET China will establish a new government body to oversee the registration and allocation of donated organs for transplants, amid widespread controversy in the field. New regulations on human organ transplants will be issued "soon", mandating the establishment of the new body, Xinhua news agency reported Monday, citing comments by Wang Jianrong, a vice director at the ministry of health. On July 1, China issued regulations on the buying and selling of human organs for transplant following widespread accusations over a black market trade in organs harvested...

dpaAPPope Benedict spent time with his brother today, and, as it behooves music lovers, they went to bless a new organ - in an old chapel. How old? Oh, about 1000 years. The organ was named after Pope Benedict. Here the Pope's words: This venerable house of God, the Basilica of “Our Lady of the Old Chapel”, has been splendidly refurbished and today receives a new organ, which will now be blessed and solemnly dedicated to its proper aim: the glorification of God and the strengthening of faith. An important contribution to the renewal of sacred music in the...

This morning, I renewed my driver's license. Of course, on the application they asked me if I wanted to donate my organs in the eventuality of my death. Being an altruist by nature, my first reaction was, why not, it could help somebody. But then a fear crept into my head - what if I was seriously ill, and "they" decided to hasten my as of yet not-inevitable death to harvest my organs? While my first reaction was that is absurd, I decided to chose "no" given the well grounded fear that in today's society, where life is given no...

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has launched a new system to sign up organ and tissue donors, hoping to significantly increase the state's pool of donations. Those applying for or renewing a driver's license or ID card can now register by checking "yes" at the organ and tissue donor option, officials said Monday. The decision has legal standing and is automatically transmitted to the state's donor registry, taking the decision about whether to donate out of a family's hands. "Now, for the first time, each and every one of the 23 million licensed California drivers will have an effective,...

Womb transplants in humans should be possible within five years, say scientists in Sweden ... The procedure would allow women who have functioning ovaries but no womb to carry their own children, and the researchers say they have already been contacted by hundreds of women who are interested in having such a transplant. There are several reasons why a woman can lack a uterus. Some, with a condition called Rokitansky syndrome, are born without a vagina or a uterus. Others can lose their womb, for example through cervical cancer, or if the organ ruptures during childbirth. The only current way...

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNS) -- While cleaning shelves in the music and arts room at the Humility of Mary Center in Davenport, Sister Nancy Wooldridge thought to herself, "What can I do with all this sheet music? I can't recycle it -- it must be of value." Shelves and boxes were full of sheet music featuring classical, traditional and religious arrangements, lesson books, accompaniment music and other material that the sisters had collected over the years. The retired music teacher, a member of the Congregation of the Humility of Mary, talked with other sisters in the motherhouse about ideas as to...

CHINA ORGAN TRANSPLANTS BOOM CHINA IS THE LEADER IN TRANSPLANTS, BUT BUSINESS IS BESET BY CLAIMS THAT ORGANS COME FROM EXECUTED PRISONERS BY TIM JOHNSON Knight Ridder News Service TIANJIN, China - A few weeks after receiving a lifesaving liver transplant, Pakistani businessman Shaukat Javed shuffled slowly around a specialty hospital ward chatting up fellow organ recipients. Patients from around the globe mingled in the fourth-floor ward of the First Tianjin Central Hospital, some of them with nurses bracing their steps. In the past few years, several Chinese hospitals have done a soaring business in liver, heart and kidney transplants....

After a century of scrutinizing the laboratory mouse, one might imagine that scientists would know the creature's body like the back of their own hands. Think again, because German researchers say they have discovered a whole new organ. Common knowledge holds that in mice, the thymus, a pinkish-grey lump of tissue that helps to produce the infection-fighting T cells of the immune system, is roughly the size of a pea and nestles in the chest above the heart. Now Hans-Reimer Rodewald at the University of Ulm in Germany, and his colleagues say they have discovered a smaller, second thymus hidden...

New organ gradually taking formBy Brenda Payton, Staff Writer Inside Bay AreaLARRY MARIETTA, organist and music program director for First Congregational Church of Berkeley, had a confession to make. "One night, a friend and I unpacked (the console), opened it up and looked at it. We tried to put the packing back, but it didn't look the same," he said, laughing. "I had to confess the next day." Since the church's new organ, with 4,873 pipes, arrived last week, Marietta has been as antsy as a 6-year-old on Christmas Eve. "The expectation is part of the exhilaration, especially when it...

Two US doctors have suggested the sale of organs such as kidneys should be legalised to meet the rising demand. They said bids to increase the donor pool were failing, and a black market in organ sales was booming. Writing in Kidney International the pair said, while it remained a taboo, legalisation should be considered. But experts in the UK - where selling organs is illegal - said such a move was unnecessary and would exploit the poorest sections of society. It is a tragedy that the critical shortage of organs donated for transplant means this question arises at all...

Donor Network Right to Refuse Organs from Homosexual, Says Christian Doc By Mary Rettig December 7, 2005 (AgapePress) - Friends and family of a Tucson man are crying discrimination after the homosexual man's organs were rejected by the Donor Network of Arizona. However, a Kansas surgeon who works in organ transplantation says the decision was a good one. Albert Soto, 51, intended to donate his eyes and other tissues after death, but a spokesman from the Network says the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has established guidelines allowing centers to reject donations from men who have had sex with...

St. Vincent Medical Center, one of the largest organ transplantation centers in the state, has suspended its liver program after discovering that its doctors improperly arranged for a transplant to a Saudi national using an organ that should have gone to a much higher priority patient at another hospital, officials said. Hospital staff members then falsified documents several times to cover up the alleged maneuver, pretending that the transplant was for a patient who was near the top of the regional waiting list, hospital President and Chief Executive Gus Valdespino confirmed Monday.

Dr. Claude H. Organ Jr., an internationally known surgeon and medical educator who was the second African American to serve as president of the American College of Surgeons, died Saturday in Oakland. He was 78. Organ was editor of the prestigious Journal of American Medical Association publication Archives of Surgery for 15 years. He came to Oakland in 1989 to establish and lead the University of California, Davis/University of California San Francisco East Bay Surgery Department, now the UCSF-East Bay department of surgery. There, he oversaw the training of dozens of surgeons, including several African-American women, a population severely underrepresented...

The American Medical Association said Monday that a controversial proposal to boost organ donation merits study. It's called "presumed consent": Anyone who dies would automatically be considered an organ donor, unless he or she had previously registered an objection. During its annual meeting in Chicago, the AMA recommended pilot studies "in relatively small populations" to determine whether presumed consent would increase organ donations. Presumed consent is in effect in some countries in Europe and South America. Presumed consent laws for organ transplants have been introduced in several states, but none has passed. More here.

Terri Schiavo is not the first innocent victim of murder sanctioned by judicial fiat, although the heroic efforts of her parents alerted the world about her heartbreaking death sentence. Almost four decades ago, the fallacious concept of "brain death" was introduced to pry open the legal doors to the killing of another group of unnoticed innocents — people who agree to donate their vital organs at death. People are encouraged to consent in writing to allow another person to benefit from their vital organs, such as the heart or liver, after they die. Potential donors overcome their discomfort about the...

Woman Claims Doctors Harvested Her Organs for Illegal Transplants and Killed Her Husband By Feng Changle The Epoch Times Mar 29, 2005 Yang Jie was featured in a newspaper article after being involved in what she believed was an operation to help save her husband. After surgery, however, she found that 7/10 of her liver, gallbladder and bile duct were gone, and her husband was dead, his organs harvested for other transplants. (The Epoch Times) Doctors are expected to be guided by humanitarian concepts, exemplifying goodness and purity. The deeds of doctors at the Shenzhen Second People's Hospital in China,...

His case had been reviewed, the letter said. ``In addition, we have reviewed your personal Web site.'' The American Society of Transplant Surgeons and LifeLink are ``strongly opposed to the solicitation of organs or organ donors by recipients or their agents through Web sites,'' the letter continued. ``After careful deliberation, we will not consider any living donor for you.'' Crionas was stunned by the decision. ``I was dumbfounded ... I'm, like, are you serious?'' The LifeLink letter said he could be put back on the national list to wait for a ``deceased'' kidney of someone who had made provisions to...

Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes." The series premiered on December 13, and is set in Israel and the West Bank. It broadcasts every Monday, and was filmed in Persian but subsequently dubbed into Arabic. The story follows an Israeli candidate for Prime Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, who is also the military commander of the West Bank. The opening sequence of the show contains graphic scenes of surgery, and images of a Palestinian girl in a hospital whose eyes have been removed, with bandages covering the sockets. In...

"What an incredible story", I thought as I read the article. But it wasn’t published in a prestigious medical journal. Rather, it was an article in the New Yorker Magazine written by Ian Parker about about Zell Kravinsky. Zell had given away almost his entire 45 million dollar real estate fortune to charity. Then he donated a kidney to save a young stranger’s life. He had even considered donating his other kidney and subjecting himself to kidney dialysis to save another young life. This is Sacrifice with a capital S! Yet thousands of his fellow citizens refuse to donate organs...

London 16.11.2004 | Time and again the rants of this deceitful woman are printed all over the internet and quite frankly I am getting fed up with it. Therefore I will again invite Eva Golinger to provide legal evidence of the crimes, she so happily attributes to opposition actors in Venezuela. To that end I will place here links to the relevant legislation so that it could be simpler, for her, to browse and publish the article or provision of Venezuelan laws that has been breached.

I am sorry for the vanity, but I hope that by posting it on a Friday night that I do as little damage to the forum as possible. There was an amazingly beautiful hymn performed at Reagan's State Funeral that I can't get out of my head, one that I wish to add to my personal collection. It is a marvelous performance that culminates with the grand organ adding itself to the youth choir that opened the hymn, adding depth and weight to the life they were celebrating. Can anyone in freeperdom help me identify it, and possibly point me...

Baby Who Received Eight-Organ Transplant Coos in Mom's Arms Mar 19, 2004 By Coralie Carlson/ Associated Press Writer MIAMI (AP) - Wearing a pink dress, an Italian infant who received eight new organs in a single transplant operation cried and cooed Friday as her mother cradled her and said she looked forward to her daughter's future. "Her biggest feeling is happiness," said a doctor interpreting for Monica di Matteo, 39, mother of cherubic 7 1/2-month-old Alessia di Matteo. The transplant surgery was done seven weeks ago but not announced until Thursday. Mother and baby appeared at a news conference Friday...

Kidney donor pushes his altruism to the extremeBy Stephanie StromThe New York Times PHILADELPHIA — Having given one kidney to a total stranger, Zell Kravinsky was sipping an orange-mango Snapple and, unprompted, making a case for giving away his other one. "What if someone needed it who could produce more good than me?" Kravinsky said last week. "What if I was a perfect match for a dying scientist who was the intellectual driving force behind a breakthrough cure for cancer or AIDS or on the brink of unlocking the secrets of cell regeneration?" The consequences of Kravinsky giving away his...

Apropos of nothing much, I thought some others would want to listen to the lovely music at this link. It's Bach organ music--lovely stuff for wrapping up a Sunday.

Wyoming high in organ donors By Allison Fashek Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE – Suzanne and Wayne Robinson of Cheyenne know how important it is to talk to family members about organ donation. Wayne recalls a conversation he had with their oldest son, Chris, right around the time the teenager was applying for his driver’s license. “He asked me, ‘What should I do?’” said Wayne, a construction manager. “I told him the choice was his, but the idea was that if something happened to him down the road, it was an important decision. He thought it was a good...

I’ve written for The Twilight Zone. Let me take you there. It’s yearbook photo day for Springfield Junior High’s class of 2025. Jason’s been avoiding getting his picture taken. His teacher wonders why until she looks in a yearbook from a generation ago and finds a photo of a student who looks identical to Jason. A mandatory reporter, Jason’s teacher phones authorities. They investigate, arrest Jason’s father for violation of the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003, and place Jason in a foster home. This law isn’t science fiction. H.R. 534 has already been passed by the United States House...

Jan. 30 – The AMA has expressed its outrage at a proposed law in New Mexico that could make some motorcyclists into forced organ donors. The proposal, introduced in the New Mexico Legislature by state Sen. Allen Hurt (R-Waterflow), would allow the harvesting of organs from any motorcyclist who doesn't wear a helmet and is declared brain dead as a result of an accident. Hurt's bill, designated Senate Bill 239, specifically states that: "a person operating a motorcycle without a helmet and who, as the result of an accident, is pronounced brain dead pursuant to Section 12-2-4 NMSA 1978 by...

For organ transplant candidates, death by communist propaganda... by Greg Swann In the Jewish World Review Amitai Etzioni shows us how freedom's best enemies are her so-called friends: That said, I see a danger in paying for doing things we ought to do out of moral commitment. Furthermore, when we turn organs into a commodity, we lose the sense of closeness people have when they act as family or friends rather than as traders.Now carrots are sold cash-and-carry. There's a profound moral commitment involved--thousands of 'em--but none that Etzioni would approve of. The thing is, I have my choice...

News Life from death: Four alive from teen's decision Candy Priano gets a hug from one of those who formed a human chain around Enloe Medical Center Jan. 24, praying for her daughter Kristie, who lay inside with injuries from a car crash. Kristie's brother Steven has his hand on his mother's back. (Ty Barbour/Enterprise-Record) By LARRY MITCHELL - Staff WriterMany of the 6,439 Americans who died waiting for organ transplants last year would be alive today if only more organs were available.And more organs would be available if more people would make their wishes known.Many people don't know...

Thursday, 22 August, 2002, 16:39 GMT 17:39 UK Cloned pigs raise transplant hopes World's first "double-knockout" pigs By Richard Black BBC Science Correspondent A British biotechnology company is claiming a breakthrough in the quest to create organs for transplant from pigs into humans. PPL Therapeutics, based near Edinburgh in Scotland, says it has created the first so-called "double knock-out" pigs, genetically-engineered to lack both copies of a gene which causes rejection. Scientists have given a mixed reaction to the claim. Some experts say it represents a genuine advance, while others caution that it is one small step along a very...

Thursday, 22 August, 2002, 16:39 GMT 17:39 UK Cloned pigs raise transplant hopes World's first "double-knockout" pigs By Richard Black BBC Science Correspondent A British biotechnology company is claiming a breakthrough in the quest to create organs for transplant from pigs into humans. PPL Therapeutics, based near Edinburgh in Scotland, says it has created the first so-called "double knock-out" pigs, genetically-engineered to lack both copies of a gene which causes rejection. Scientists have given a mixed reaction to the claim. Some experts say it represents a genuine advance, while others caution that it is one small step along a very...