Here’s something I haven’t heard of before: Do body part transplants require ethnic matching of donor to patient?
On local news radio today, I heard of a young child who needs bone marrow transplant. Problem: He is half-Chinese, half-Caucasian. They put out a call for donor volunteers. They can’t just go to the Chinatown area to advertise, because the people there are mostly full-blooded Chinese. (The implication was that they can’t use a Caucasian donor from Merkin-town either.) They are looking for a half-Chinese, half-Caucasian donor, it sounded like.
What else needs to be matched between donor and patient for transplants? Do they have to match gender too? Can Blacks give or receive transplants to/from Caucasians? Or Chinese? Is there a story here?
Certain traits have to match in order for an organ transplant to be successful. People with similar ancestry are most likely to have similar traits. Organ transplants don’t have to be “ethnically matched”, it’s possible that, by random chance that, say, a Frenchman and a Chinese person might have compatible traits, but that is much, much, much less likely than two Frenchmen having proper matching traits, or two Chinese people have the proper matches.
For this reason, doctors tend to look within ethnicities for donors, but they don’t rule out a match if they find one outside the normal lines. It’s possible that black people have received organs form white people, or vice versa, or some other crossing, it’s just not typical.
The very first heart transplant was performed by Dr Christian Barnaard in Cape Town, South Africa. The recipient was a White man, Louis Washkansky. The donor was “colored,” in those days that meant someone of mixed race.
Obviously, all the different factors were not taken into consideration at the very beginning of transplantation history. Mr Washkansky only lived three days, if I recall correctly. But considering the extreme amount of prejudice in South Africa during that time, it is an absolutely landmark event, not only for medical history, but for sociological history as well.
The goal of any transplant surgery is survival of the host, and survival of the donor organ. Many different tissue typings are done today, as well as the mainstay ABO used to type blood. The more factors which can be matched, the less rejection and the better the survival chances.
Many ethnic groups have objections regarding transplanting. These prevent any tissue databases from having a wide variety of donors listed who can provide to a greater number of recipients. Because of that, there are folks who desperately need a transplant who eventually die. That is why you hear of “targeted campaigns” to register people from a particular ethnic group. It’s NOT a racial profiling.
ETA: According to Wikipedia, Mr Washkansky lived for nineteen days following his transplant. WTG, Louis!
~VOW
NOW I know what it means to “miss the edit window”!
ETA2: I guess my memory is fading, LOL. The donor to Mr Washkansky was White. However, the donor’s kidneys were given to a young “colored” boy, thus sparking racial tension due to apartheid laws. This occurred in December, 1967, so we can be appreciative of how much of my memory has been preserved over the years…
A living donor who is graciously sharing life with another person typically has the more extensive surgery and a longer recuperation time. Their generosity is indescribable!
~VOW
When I worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the late '70s, non related donors were selected by blood type, HLA matching and ethnicity. HLA matching was imprecise. We matched around 15 antigens, but there are hundreds that affect whether a match is successful. By choosing from a similar gene pool the chances of a good match were increased.
