Multi-tiered organ transplant questions

A member of my family recently received a shiny new (well, okay, slightly used) liver.

  1. Now as this site says, there’s no way to prove the existence of cellular memory. I can say that this family member’s behavior has been markedly changed in some aspects since the surgery. An debate can be made that it is purely circumstantial whether psychological from the ‘dying’ state prior to the transplant, the head-trip from knowing they have a corpse’s organs embedded, or any number of other factors. But there are sites that claim emphatically that characteristics of the donor seem to take form (do a google, you’ll find 'em!). What evidence says that this is not possible, given that we do not know everything there is to know about atoms, cells, and whatnot?

  2. Faced with the prospect of getting a transplant, this caused my firmly Catholic family member some consternation; she was worried about the ‘Day of Resurrection’ and what would she not be resurrected because of this foreign organ? Now of course the rest of us adamantly dismissed this concern, and I went so far as to say, “If God can resurrect us, then He can also put all of the pieces back together in the proper place and in the proper working order.” I don’t doubt my own logic on this, but what is the teaching (probably fundamental) regarding this topic?

  3. Since liver transplants are still relatively ‘new’ by scientific standards, they would not give us a new ‘life expectancy’ for post transplant expectancy… given the great minds on the SDMB, what is the medically considered opinion of your esteemed medical minds on a life-span post liver transplant?

  1. I don’t buy it one bit.
  2. I don’t know
  3. There’s too much variation for any answer to be meaningful. There’s just no such thing as the “average liver transplant patient”. I could tell you that 500 patients who had the operation had an average survival of 8 years, but since the data clustered itself all over the freaking place with many dying within the first week, many dying in the first year, etc. with only 3 or 4 dying at 8 years, but lots surviving up to and over 15 years, the answer of 8 has no predictive meaning (warning: numbers used for example purpose, I don’t claim these are the real data).

Don’t have an opinion about your first few questions. It would be hard to design an empirical study.

My father lived 2 1/2 years after liver transplant. He had cardiac problems which probably contributed. What appears to have happened is that he had been able to reduce his cyclosporin and other medications significantly. He got pneumonia, and apparently was able to muster enough immune response that he began rejecting the liver. Although he shook the pneumonia, with the undetected necrosis came cardiac failure, which was the immediate cause of his death (we elected to have CPR discontinued).

2 1/2 years may not seem like a very long time, but my father was very clear that it was worth it, and I was certainly very glad to have him in my life for that much longer. It’s an involved, complex, time-consuming and ongoing process for the family as well as the recipient, but I’ll always be glad we did it and extremely grateful for the donor family’s generosity.

For your second question, the Catholic church considers organ donation an “act of love” and supports organ donation when it is proven that the donor is deceased. See here for the article I got this from. It does not speak on theological issues surrounding transplants and the ‘Day of Resurrection’.

Regarding question #2

1 Corinthians 15:35 asks the question “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they be raised?” The passage goes on to use the analogy of wheat seed and the mature wheat plant. You couldn’t guess what the mature plant would look like just based on the seed. They belong to different stages. So it is with the resurrection: our resurrected bodies are of an altogether different “splendor”.
Bottom line for question #2 – no Biblical reason to worry.:slight_smile:

Hoping for a speedy recovery!