NHM Health Focus: 55 Years of Organ Transplantation July 2009

Type "transplant anniversary" into any search engine and you will find many personal and technical anniversaries recognized and celebrated. Each transplant recipient, family member, donor family member, living donor, and involved professional has reason to be honored.

Transplant recipients continue to be honored at the National Kidney Foundation U.S. Transplant Games, a four-day athletic competition among recipients of organ transplants.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official site for organ donation and transplantation can be found at organdonor.gov. From this site you can access information about organ donation, organ donation news, donor / recipient stories and former Secretary Tommy Thompson's Blood Donation Challenge to us all to "Give Thanks, Give Life, Give Twice". Anyone in good health, 17 years of age (16 in some states) and weighing at least 110 pounds can give blood. Get the facts about blood donation safety and need. Then see what you can do to help meet this challenge.

Transplant Living has diagrams of organs frequently transplanted and summaries of what these organs do along with details of what happens before, during and after transplantation.

Related resources on our Access Excellence Web site include:

• Activities Exchange: Fellows Collection – STS Biology - Teaching Controversial Topics
  "... this infant will die within a day of birth (100% mortality with this genetic disorder). Doctors would be able to use the baby's organs for transplants or the tissues of the fetus if ..."
  
  
• Let’s Collaborate : Science Seminar – How To Fix an Eye
  Researchers have used animal models to demonstrate that transplanting healthy retina cells is possible and can rescue dying photoreceptor cells.
  
  
• Classic Collection: The Heart and the Circulatory System
  
  
• Resource Center: Virtual Experiments, Tours and Simulations – Operation: Heart Transplant or How to Transplant a Heart in Nineteen Easy Steps