Top 5 Facts Organ Transplants
We live in an era of science reality: people wear phones on their wrists, smoke electronic devices and binge-watch whatever they want off of magical computer screens. And in the medical world, we've come a long way since the days of hacking off limbs and hoping for the best. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 Facts. In this instalment we're counting down the five most fascinating things that you probably didn't know about organ transplants.
Special thanks to our user Shawn Mark for submitting the idea using our interactive suggestion tool at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest
Top 5 Facts About Organ Transplants
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We live in an era of science reality: people wear phones on their wrists, smoke electronic devices and binge-watch whatever they want off of magical computer screens. And in the medical world, we’ve come a long way since the days of hacking off limbs and hoping for the best. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this instalment we’re counting down the five most fascinating things that you probably didn’t know about organ transplants.
#5: The First Successful Organ Transplant Occurred in the Early 1950s
Since the dawn of the medical profession, “doctors” (we’ll throw some air quotes on that) have been tinkering with organ transplantation. But small details like blood type and tissue rejection simply hadn’t occurred to them. Success finally came in 1954 when doctors Joseph Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison transplanted a kidney from one identical twin to another. Because the twins were so genetically similar, the risk of rejection was minimal. This caused a bit of a gold rush and surgeons went transplant crazy. One enterprising medical professional, Dr. James Hardy – who’d previously attempted a lung transplant – even went so far as to throw a chimpanzee heart into a patient. Needless to say, it didn’t pan out, and things surprisingly went south from there. Happily, transplants improved and today one organ donor can not only save eight lives, but can also better the lives of countless others through tissue donation.
#4: A Girl Had Her Severed Hand Attached to Her Leg to Keep It Alive
It’s China, 2006, and 9-year-old Ming Li is run over by a tractor, severing her hand and leaving her arm badly mutilated. Doctors at a Zhengzhou hospital scramble to keep the hand alive, while also healing her arm so reattachment might be possible. The solution? Graft that hand onto her leg. The result? It works and three months later Ming Li’s doctors reattach that bad boy back onto her arm. Feeling slowly returned and now she’s even able to move her wrist. But Ming Li’s isn’t the only case of hand-to-leg grafting out of China, as in 2015 a man known only as Zhou was brought into a Changsha hospital after his hand was lopped off in an industrial accident. Doctors followed a similar procedure and attached his hand onto his leg. The hand was successfully reattached to his arm a month later. Lesson learned: stay away from industrial equipment in China.
#3: It Might Be Possible to 3D Print Organs
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Roughly six thousand people die every year waiting for an organ transplant, and that’s just in the U.S. But what if the deadly wait time for a suitable organ donor could be eliminated entirely? Well, put on your future hat for a second because things are about to get all science fiction-y. Experts in the fields of medicine and 3D printing are proposing a revolutionary new process, which would allow them to print out human organ tissue. Does that mean you’ll be getting that third arm you asked Santa for last Christmas? Well, hold your horses cause the theory is still in its developmental stages, but researchers at Princeton and Johns Hopkins University have already printed out a prototype outer ear. “Sounds” good to us. Cause it’s an ear? You get it.
#2: Not Everyone Is Happy With Their New Penis
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There’s a scandalous title for you. A 44-year-old man in Guangzhou, China lost most of his member in an unspecified accident that we can only assume involved industrial machinery. Doctors said they could rebuild him, better, faster, stronger. In 2006, he became the recipient of the first successful human penis transplant when he was given the penis of a brain-dead 22-year-old. Things seemed to be working out just fine, but much like Frankenstein’s monster, the penile Prometheus was not long for this world. The man’s wife wasn’t too keen on the new addition and the couple experienced a psychological aversion to the stranger’s genitalia. After two weeks, the penis was re-removed– presumably via tractor. This wasn’t the last procedure of that nature; in 2014 a 21-year-old South African was given a brand spanking new tallywhacker and the two are reportedly very happy together. Oh! Did I mention that our video game host Dan had a transplant himself? Not sure why I mentioned it in this entry, but there it is.
#1: Doctors Are Working Towards Head Transplants
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In something straight out of sci-fi, the first head transplant surgery is scheduled for 2017, when a terminally ill Russian computer scientist is set to have his head transplanted onto another body. Dr. Sergio Canavero says that by severing both heads at the spinal cord, he can “glue” the healthy head onto the host body at the spine with a special substance and attach the muscles and blood supply afterwards. The patient will then be put into a four-week coma to limit movement and promote healing. Dr. Canavero’s plan was bolstered by the work of Dr. Xiaoping Ren, who has successfully reattached the heads of hundreds of mice. That is, if successfully means the mice died shortly thereafter. But let’s keep our fingers crossed. Actually, in 1970 a similar surgery was performed on a monkey who lived to the ripe old age of… a few days later. So, there’s some hope, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So go ahead, drive a motorcycle off a cliff, drink until your liver explodes and get into old timey sword duels because clearly we’ve reached a new era of medical science where even a beheading might not mean certain death. But please, do so responsibly. For more suitable donor top 10s and Chinese tractor top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.
