End the death penalty

[okarol]

A friend wrote this letter to his local newspaper in San Diego regarding a recent article about efforts to end the death penalty.

To the Editor:
There is a new push on to end the death penalty.  I agree with this advocacy.   When an individual
needs an organ transplant they are placed on a list which is must like receiving a death sentence.
The few lucky ones are given a reprieve when they receive a transplant.  There is very little support
to end this horrible practice.
 
The efforts to end the death penalty are reserved for those who have committed the most heinous crimes.
Reasons given range from inhumane to a lack of perfection.   Who cries out for the innocent who are
subjected to this inhumane system of organ transplants?   Who cares that the system of distribution of
valuable organs is far from perfect?   Certainly not the courts nor those who cynically claim to value human life.

[Rerun]

Good one!  Instead of the death penalty just remove their kidneys and let them live on dialysis. 

[glitter]

Good one!  Instead of the death penalty just remove their kidneys and let them live on dialysis. 

I'd second that!

[paris]

Great idea Rerun!!     Good letter, Okarol.   

[kitkatz]

But removing their kidneys and putting them on dialysis would be cruel and inhumane torture.  Can you imagine the lawsuits?

[KT0930]

  Great letter okarol, thank your friend for us!

Rerun, I LOVE it! It'd be better than the current system of them meeting with parole officers now (if they got parole). They see them at dialysis, they don't go to their meetings, they don't get to live - simple as that.

[Stacy Without An E]

As many of you probably have heard, many patients receiving cadaver kidneys have dreams or cravings they can't explain.  I don't believe I would feel comfortable with a transplanted organ from someone with a criminal background that would lead to the death penalty.  I would fear the nightmares would be frightening and my personality could be twisted in ways that I don't even wish to contemplate.

Before I received my sister's kidney I never had any cravings for sweets or chocolate.

Completely different story after the transplant.

Thank you and good night.

[angela515]

As many of you probably have heard, many patients receiving cadaver kidneys have dreams or cravings they can't explain.  I don't believe I would feel comfortable with a transplanted organ from someone with a criminal background that would lead to the death penalty.  I would fear the nightmares would be frightening and my personality could be twisted in ways that I don't even wish to contemplate.

Before I received my sister's kidney I never had any cravings for sweets or chocolate.

Completely different story after the transplant.

Thank you and good night.

This doesn't happen to everyone though. Never happened to me... as of yet.

[KT0930]

Stacy, I've never heard of that.

[Joe Paul]

Couldn't be worse than sitting through 4 hours of dialysis.

[LightLizard]

read the book 'the heart's code' by paul pearsal. its a serious study and presentation of many transplant recipients who have had drastic changes to their taste buds and the like, after their transplants.
its a very entertaining book and puts forth the premise that the heart is actually a thinking organ, but is drowned out by the noise of the brain...

another very interesting point it makes concerns a little girl that had received a heart transplant, after which she began having awful nightmares about being murdered by a man with a knife. the dreams were so persistant that her mother had her see a psychiatrist, who, with a little behind-the-scenes influence, managed to find out who the donor was; a little girl that had been murdered by a man with a kniife. she asked the patient if she knew the man's name, (who had never been caught) - she did. the doctor informed the police. when they knocked on the man's door, he opened it, saw the police, and immediately confessed to the crime. he is in prison to this day for that crime.

love

~LL~

[oswald]

after my second transplant, i had cravings and weird dreams also.  when the transplant died, so did the cravings and dreams.  with this third transplant, no cravings or weird dreams.  very strange indeed.

[Chris]

As many of you probably have heard, many patients receiving cadaver kidneys have dreams or cravings they can't explain.  I don't believe I would feel comfortable with a transplanted organ from someone with a criminal background that would lead to the death penalty.  I would fear the nightmares would be frightening and my personality could be twisted in ways that I don't even wish to contemplate.

Before I received my sister's kidney I never had any cravings for sweets or chocolate.

Completely different story after the transplant.

Thank you and good night.

This doesn't happen to everyone though. Never happened to me... as of yet.

Never happened to me either and people around me have asked about that too if I had any odd cravings. Sometimes I feel that  is the stupidest question you could ask me, and quit bugging me about it!

[stauffenberg]

The phenomenon you are all discussing is well known in conventional medicine and is referred to as 'cellular memory.'  Since the kidney participates in all the functions of the body and brain via hormonal, circulatory, and neurological interconnections, it is obviously influenced by everything the body has ever experienced -- even by thoughts in some way.  Thus patients who receive a new kidney often find that their tastes change in some unanticipated way, perhaps because the kidney they receive encodes some taste preferences of the donor, either because of its biochemistry having determined these preferences in the first place, or because the nervous system has communicated to it preferences developed in the brain via the surrounding culture and society of the donor.

For me, I liked chewing gum before the transplant, but in the two years since then, I have never once had any interest in chewing gum.  Whether cellular memory can influence more sophisticated things than taste preferences and impose entire thoughts or attitudes on the recipient is less clear, however.

Interestingly, all of this is anticipated in Mary Shelley's book, "Frankenstein," which first appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century!

[lola]

Since Otto's transplant he no longer can eat seafood. We went out for Crab legs the day he got out of hospital and his lips got all swollen and everytime he tried eating seafood his symptoms got worse so we asked his Dr and they said maybe the person he got the kidney from was allergic? So now I have to eat for the both of us hehehe