Organ Donor Infects 3 With Rabies

(Neu Isenburg, Germany) A 26-year-old organ donor, who died from heart failure after using cocaine and ecstasy, was found to have rabies after her organs were transplanted into six other individuals. She got the disease during a trip to India last October.

Doctors said there was little hope for a woman in Hanover who received a lung transplant and a man in Hannoversch-Muenden near Kassel who received a kidney transplant. A man in Marburg who received a pancreas and kidney is also in critical condition.

Three other patients who received transplants are not showing symptoms of the disease.

Apparently, doctors are more concerned about lack of organs for transplant than they are about occasionally transplanting diseased organs.

[Update 2/22/05] According to an updated report, the 70-year-old man who received a kidney transplant at a Hannoversch Muenden clinic in northern Germany has died. The woman in Hanover who received a lung transplant also died. The man in Marburg who received a pancreas and kidney is hanging on in serious condition.

Also, it appears that the 26-year-old female donor had been thoroughly tested for bacteria, viruses and tumors with no negative findings before the transplants, according to the German Organ Transplant Foundation. I guess 'thorough testing' doesn't detect rabies.

Catallarchy posts on the transplant issue in Grand Rounds XXII and raises the salient point that there should be more debate about opening up the marketplace for transplant organs. I think more debate on the issue is desirable and, if it leads to more organs being available for transplant, potentially quite beneficial.