question: Why is it impossible to avoid death by constantly getting transplants from younger people?
comment: > I like to think of the human body as a PC setup Except it's nothing like a PC. It's an absurdly complex biological system that we barely understand, unlike PCs which we've designed from the get go. Aging occurs in every single cell of the body at the fundamental, genetic level (i.e. in our software, so to speak). Then there's the issue of where all of these new organs are going to come from, how they'll be "installed" and who will pay for it? Where will you put everyone, if no one dies? As it is, many forms of transplants are really only stop gap measures that buy the patient a few more years and require they be on immunosupresent, anti-rejection drugs for life. Biological organisms may be aided/enhanced by various bits of hardware, but we're hardwired to die from the moment of our creation.
passages: Another example of this situation occurs with a special form of liver transplant in which the recipient suffers from familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy, a disease where the liver slowly produces a protein that damages other organs. The recipient's liver can then be transplanted into an older person for whom the effects of the disease will not necessarily contribute significantly to mortality.
   Limited success has been achieved in ABOi heart transplantation in adults, though this requires that the adult recipients have low levels of anti-A or anti-B antibodies. Some organs are more conducive to adult ABOi transplant than others, such as liver and kidney. Adults are significantly likely to suffer from hyperacute rejection, thrombosis, or death, but could be considered to be an acceptable risk if the alternative is otherwise death. In the case of ABOi renal transplantation, aggressive antibody removal is required, along with supplemental medication, with the resulting condition being termed "accommodation." While such recipients are more likely to require re-transplantation early on, long-term graft survival is similar to recipients who receive ABOc kidneys.
   BULLET::::- 2009–2010: Joren C. Madsen, MD, DPhil
  
  BULLET::::- 2008–2009: Barbara Murphy, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2007–2008: Flavio Vincenti, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2006–2007: Jeffrey S. Crippin, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2005–2006: Richard N. Fine, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2004–2005: Jay Alan Fishman, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 2003–2004: Michael R. Lucey, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2002–2003: William E. Harmon, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 2001–2002: Laurence A. Turka, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 2000–2001: Mohamed H. Sayegh, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1999–2000: John R. Lake, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1998–1999: John F. Neylan, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1997–1998: J. Harold Helderman, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1996–1997: Leslie W. Miller, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1995–1996: Douglas J. Norman, MD, FAST
   In an April 2008 article in "The Guardian", Steven Tsui, the head of the transplant team at Papworth Hospital in the UK, is quoted in raising the ethical issue of not holding out false hope. He stated, "Conventionally we would say if people's life expectancy was a year or less we would consider them a candidate for a heart transplant. But we also have to manage expectations. If we know that in an average year we will do 30 heart transplants, there is no point putting 60 people on our waiting list, because we know half of them will die and it's not right to give them false hope."
   Section::::Types of transplant.:ABO-incompatible transplants.
  
  Because very young children (generally under 12 months, but often as old as 24 months) do not have a well-developed immune system, it is possible for them to receive organs from otherwise incompatible donors. This is known as ABO-incompatible (ABOi) transplantation. Graft survival and people's mortality is approximately the same between ABOi and ABO-compatible (ABOc) recipients. While focus has been on infant heart transplants, the principles generally apply to other forms of solid organ transplantation.
   As the rising success rate of transplants and modern immunosuppression make transplants more common, the need for more organs has become critical. Transplants from living donors, especially relatives, have become increasingly common. Additionally, there is substantive research into xenotransplantation, or transgenic organs; although these forms of transplant are not yet being used in humans, clinical trials involving the use of specific cell types have been conducted with promising results, such as using porcine islets of Langerhans to treat type 1 diabetes. However, there are still many problems that would need to be solved before they would be feasible options in people requiring transplants.
   Section::::Presidents.
  
  Current and past presidents of the Canadian Society of Transplantation:
  
  BULLET::::- 1980-1981 Pierre Robitaille
  
  BULLET::::- 1981-1982 Michael Robinette
  
  BULLET::::- 1982-1983 George deVeber
  
  BULLET::::- 1983-1984 John Dossetor
  
  BULLET::::- 1984-1985 Allan MacDonald
  
  BULLET::::- 1985-1986 Ronald Guttman
  
  BULLET::::- 1986-1987 Pierre Daloze
  
  BULLET::::- 1987-1988 Philip Halloran
  
  BULLET::::- 1988-1989 F. Neil McKenzie
  
  BULLET::::- 1989-1990 Carl Cardella
  
  BULLET::::- 1990-1991 Paul Keown
  
  BULLET::::- 1991-1992 Phil Belitsky
  
  BULLET::::- 1992-1993 John Jeffery
  
  BULLET::::- 1993-1994 Paul Greig
  
  BULLET::::- 1994-1995 David Ludwin
  
  BULLET::::- 1995-1996 Norman Kneteman
  
  BULLET::::- 1996-1997 Guy Fradet
  
  BULLET::::- 1997-1999 Rolf Loertscher
  
  BULLET::::- 1999-2000 Alan Menkis
  
  BULLET::::- 2000-2001 Vivian McAlister
  
  BULLET::::- 2001-2002 David Rush
  
  BULLET::::- 2002-2004 Anthony Jevnikar
   BULLET::::- 1964: Human patient lived nine months with chimpanzee kidneys, twelve other human patients only lived one to two months, Keith Reemtsma and team (New Orleans, U.S.A.)
  
  BULLET::::- 1965: Australia's first successful (living) kidney transplant (Queen Elizabeth Hospital, SA, Australia)
  
  BULLET::::- 1966: First successful pancreas transplant by Richard Lillehei and William Kelly (Minnesota, U.S.A.)
  
  BULLET::::- 1967: First successful liver transplant by Thomas Starzl (Denver, U.S.A.)
  
  BULLET::::- 1967: First successful heart transplant by Christian Barnard (Cape Town, South Africa)
  
  BULLET::::- 1981: First successful heart/lung transplant by Bruce Reitz (Stanford, U.S.A.)
   BULLET::::- 1994–1995: Thomas A. Gonwa, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1993–1994: Manikkam Suthanthiran, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1992–1993: Alan R. Hull, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1991–1992: Ronald H. Kerman, PhD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1990–1991: M. Roy First, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1989–1990: William E. Braun, MD, FAST
  
  BULLET::::- 1988–1989: Barry S. Levin, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1987–1988: Lawrence G. Hunsicker, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1986–1987: Nancy E. Goeken, PhD
  
  BULLET::::- 1985–1986: Fred P. Sanfilippo, MD, PhD
  
  BULLET::::- 1984–1985: Robert B. Ettenger, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1983–1984: Charles B. Carpenter, MD
  
  BULLET::::- 1982–1983: Ronald D. Guttmann, MD, FRCPC
  
  BULLET::::- 1982–1983: Terry B. Strom, MD
  
  Section::::AST Research Network.
   BULLET::::- 1983: First successful lung lobe transplant by Joel Cooper at the Toronto General Hospital (Toronto, Canada)
  
  BULLET::::- 1984: First successful double organ transplant by Thomas Starzl and Henry T. Bahnson (Pittsburgh, U.S.A.)
  
  BULLET::::- 1986: First successful double-lung transplant (Ann Harrison) by Joel Cooper at the Toronto General Hospital (Toronto, Canada)
  
  BULLET::::- 1990: First successful adult segmental living-related liver transplant by Mehmet Haberal (Ankara, Turkey)
  
  BULLET::::- 1992: First successful combined liver-kidney transplantation from a living-related donor by Mehmet Haberal (Ankara, Turkey)
  
  BULLET::::- 1995: First successful laparoscopic live-donor nephrectomy by Lloyd Ratner and Louis Kavoussi (Baltimore, U.S.A.)
   The youngest organ donor was a baby with anencephaly, born in 2015, who lived for only 100 minutes and donated his kidneys to an adult with renal failure. The oldest known organ donor was a 107-year-old Scottish woman, whose corneas were donated after her death in 2016. The oldest known organ donor for an internal organ was a 92-year-old Texas man, whose family chose to donate his liver after he died of a brain hemorrhage.
   Favoring the worst off could be accomplished by favoring the sickest first or by favoring the youngest first. Favoring the sickest appeals to the rule of rescue, but organ transplants don’t always work well with the sickest patients. Also, a different patient could become equally sick in the future. Favoring the youngest saves the most years of life, but a twenty-year-old has a more developed personality than an infant.
   BULLET::::- 2010: First full facial transplant by Dr. Joan Pere Barret and team (Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron on 26 July 2010, in Barcelona, Spain)
  
  BULLET::::- 2011: First double leg transplant by Dr. Cavadas and team (Valencia's Hospital, La Fe, Spain)
  
  BULLET::::- 2012: First Robotic Alloparathyroid transplant. University of Illinois Chicago
  
  BULLET::::- 2013: First successful entire face transplantation as an urgent life-saving surgery at Maria Skłodowska-Curie Institute of Oncology branch in Gliwice, Poland.
  
  BULLET::::- 2014: First successful uterine transplant resulting in live birth (Sweden)
  
  BULLET::::- 2014: First successful penis transplant. (South Africa)
  
  BULLET::::- 2014: First neonatal organ transplant. (U.K.)
   In the United States nearly 35,000 organ transplants were done in 2017, a 3.4 percent increase over 2016. About 18 percent of these were from living donors — people who gave one kidney or a part of their liver to someone else. But 115,000 Americans remain on waiting lists for organ transplants.
  
  Section::::History.
  
  Successful human allotransplants have a relatively long history of operative skills that were present long before the necessities for post-operative survival were discovered. Rejection and the side effects of preventing rejection (especially infection and nephropathy) were, are, and may always be the key problem.
   Even within developed countries there is concern that enthusiasm for increasing the supply of organs may trample on respect for the right to life. The question is made even more complicated by the fact that the "irreversibility" criterion for legal death cannot be adequately defined and can easily change with changing technology.
  
  Section::::Society and culture.:Artificial organ transplantation.
   An article posted in the "American Journal of Transplantation" authored by Dr. Sweet and Dr. Barr in December 2013 discussed points brought up by the Murnaghan family. First they stated, "Indeed, the pool of adult transplant candidates is more than 50 times larger than the number of pediatric candidates. So the actual number of lungs recovered from donors under 12 reflects both donor availability and candidate demand. In fact, roughly 5% of the 400+ donors each year under 12 provide lungs compared to more than 35% of the 400+ adolescent donors (Figure 1). It is unlikely that donor characteristics are solely responsible for the lower percentage. Thus one area of focus for the pediatric lung transplant community should be to explore tapping into this apparent opportunity."
   BULLET::::- Quarantine has never been a standard procedure for those with severe combined immunodeficiency, despite the condition's popular nickname ("bubble boy syndrome") and its portrayal in film. A bone marrow transplant in the earliest months of life is the standard course of treatment. The exceptional case of David Vetter, who indeed lived much of his life encased in a sterile environment because he would not receive a transplant until age 13 (the transplant, because of failure to detect a rare disease, instead killed Vetter), was one of the primary inspirations for the "bubble boy" trope.
  
  Section::::Science and technology.:Inventions.
   Many societies have a system for organ donation, in which a living or deceased donor's organ is transplanted into a person with a failing organ. The transplantation of larger solid organs often requires immunosuppression to prevent organ rejection or graft-versus-host disease.
  
  There is considerable interest throughout the world in creating laboratory-grown or artificial organs.
  
  Organ-on-a-chip is being developed in various research centers, including the Wyss Institute at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
  
  Section::::History.
   Because very young children (generally under 12 months, but often as old as 24 months) do not have a well-developed immune system, it is possible for them to receive organs from otherwise incompatible donors. This is known as ABO-incompatible (ABOi) transplantation. Graft survival and patient mortality is approximately the same between ABOi and ABO-compatible (ABOc) recipients. While focus has been on infant heart transplants, the principles generally apply to other forms of solid organ transplantation.
   Care must be taken when finding organs for the very young (this requires special training, or at least knowledge of, pediatric and newborn transplantation procedures), or certain very elderly patients (there may or may not be mandatory or preferred cut-off ages for receiving an organ or tissue, depending on the location, the institutions involved, the surgical team, whether the patient has any relevant co-morbidities and whether they are capable of caring for their new situation, how long and how well they might live, and the patient's and family's wishes).
  
  Section::::Donor issues.
   Looking at the statistics for Canada, one can see that there has been an increase in the number of people waiting for a transplant between 2009 and 2010, while between 2008 and 2009 there was a decrease in the number of people on the wait-list.
  
  Section::::Statistics.:Ontario organ transplants.
   Of these challenges, dealing with blood supply and transplant rejection have been addressed in the field of transplant medicine generally, making transplantation of several types of organs fairly routine; however in a field as common as liver transplantation around a quarter of organs are rejected within the first year and overall mortality is still much higher than the general population. The challenge of grafting the nervous system remained in early stages of research .
  
  Section::::History.
   Transplantation is the final therapeutic option and only for patients with poor prognosis and quality of life. Timing and appropriateness of transplantation remain difficult decisions. 5-year and 10-year survival ranges between 70% and 80%, 50% and 70%, 30% and 50%, respectively. Since the average life expectancy of patients after lung transplantation is as low as 30% at 5 years, patients with "reasonable functional status" related to Eisenmenger syndrome have "improved survival with conservative medical care" compared with transplantation.
   Since medication to prevent rejection is so effective, donors do not need to be similar to their recipient. Most donated kidneys come from deceased donors; however, the utilisation of living donors in the United States is on the rise. In 2006, 47% of donated kidneys were from living donors. This varies by country: for example, only 3% of kidneys transplanted during 2006 in Spain came from living donors. In Spain all citizens are potential organ donors in the case of their death, unless they explicitly opt out during their lifetime.
  
  Section::::Sources of kidneys.:Living donors.
   Limited success has been achieved in ABO-incompatible heart transplants in adults, though this requires that the adult recipients have low levels of anti-A or anti-B antibodies. Renal transplantation is more successful, with similar long-term graft survival rates to ABOc transplants.
  
  Section::::Types of transplant.:Transplantation in obese individuals.
  
presuppositions: Should be possible to avoid death by getting new transplants. Constantly getting transplants from younger people is enough to stave aging.
corrections: Organs are only one part of the human body. A lot of other parts of the body age and those can lead to death as well.  Humans are programmed to die, even if transplanted with parts from younger people.
raw_presuppositions: Should be possible to avoid death by getting new transplants. Constantly getting transplants from younger people is enough to stave aging.
raw_corrections: Organs are only one part of the human body. A lot of other parts of the body age and those can lead to death as well.  Humans are programmed to die, even if transplanted with parts from younger people.