Many people around the world are currently on waiting lists. They are hoping for a new kidney, liver, or even heart in the hopes of extending their life for at least a few more years. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these people will never receive a transplant. The number of donors in the world is still relatively tiny compared to the number of people who need donor organs, and this is unlikely to change much any time soon. In these cases, it usually is—or eventually becomes—a life or death situation. This means many people will do whatever it takes to get their loved one the necessary organ to survive, and scientists are working hard to solve the problem once and for all.

10Extra Kidneys

When most organs are transplanted, the old non-functioning ones are usually removed. However, in the case of kidneys, they are often left in the body. This means someone whose kidneys have failed (and has received a donor organ) will have their new kidney plus both of the old ones that no longer work properly. The reason for this is the location of the kidney. It is located in a rather inconvenient spot in your lower back, so the doctors performing the operation just leave them in unless there is a really important reason to remove them (such as the non-functioning kidney being infected).

The new kidney is not placed near the old ones, but is instead placed in a more convenient part of the body near the pelvis called the iliac fossa. This is between the hip bone and the pelvis and located close to the hip, much lower than the kidneys usually are.

However, while an organ transplant patient can end up with two non-functioning kidneys and one working one, some people can start with extra kidneys from birth. While the cases are rare—about one in a million—sometimes people are actually born with multiple developed kidneys. This happens when the kidneys split as they are developing during the early stages of pregnancy. While having extra kidneys is not unheard of, being born with extras that actually function is very rare. Some people with extra functioning kidneys have even claimed their extra organ helped them process more alcohol so they could drink more than their friends.

9A Match Doesn’t Guarantee Acceptance

If you’ve ever seen organ transplantation on a TV show or movie, the plot line usually involves finding the donor that matches just right, and after that the person is fine and it’s all a fairy tale ending. Unfortunately, as with many things, entertainment media tend to take a lot of creative license when it comes to reality.

Finding as close a match as possible is certainly important. Back before we knew that we needed to find close matches, rejection was more common and transplant patients didn’t survive long. But it simply isn’t enough to make your body accept the organ. Your body sees any organ that is not your own as an invader, and your immune system starts attacking your new life-saving organ in a vain attempt to protect itself.

Finding a close match will make fighting rejection much easier, but it’s no guarantee, and even family isn’t a close enough match that you won’t need to suppress your immune system to stay alive. Your luck at finding an exact match is very low unless you have a twin sibling lying around. However, it gets even more complicated.

While matching antigens against possible donors can help doctors figure out what organs will be the best match, sometimes organs that should have been accepted by the body were not and, other times, people who were not proper matches managed to keep their body from rejecting the organ in question. Because of this, doctors believe there could be other antigens or mechanisms involved in rejection that we haven’t yet discovered.

8Diabetes Mellitus

As we mentioned, getting an exact match doesn’t mean your body won’t try to reject the organ. In fact, once you have had an organ transplant, you have to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of the time you have the transplanted organ in you to avoid rejection. The worry is that if the match is not close enough, your body may still choose to ultimately reject the organ even with the immunosuppressants. This can be catastrophic for the person who relies on the new body part. As we mentioned earlier, the reason your body tries to reject the organ is that it sees it as a foreign invader. The better the match the less your body will tend to resist.

In order to keep your body’s immune system from rejecting the organ, transplant patients are put on drugs that suppress their immune system responses. While these drugs do keep the person alive, they also come with considerable risk. Having your immune system suppressed can make a cold, flu, or really much of anything, much more life-threatening. To make matters worse, many of the drugs that are taken for suppression of the immune system actually cause diabetes mellitus in many transplant patients. If the patients could stop taking the drug, theoretically, the diabetes would probably go away, but the vast majority of patients will have to keep taking the immunosuppresants.

7The Red Market

A journalist named Scott Carney has been studying the underground selling of human bones, organs, and other matter—something which he has termed “the red market.” While he can’t get an exact figure due to the fact that the operations are all illegal, he estimates that the trade in human body parts is easily a billion-dollar business. In fact, he believes that with his good health his entire body—if totally dismembered and used in every conceivable way—could be worth as much as a quarter of a million dollars.

There are some misconceptions about how the red market works, though. Some people think of it as foreigners tricking tourists who wake up in a bathtub the next morning feeling like they drank too much and with a fresh surgical scar to mark the removal of their precious organ. However, most of the time it is a voluntary cash transaction.

For example, shortly after a 2004 tsunami that left many Indians displaced, Carney heard of a camp that was known as Kidneyville. Organ traffickers saw the desperation of all the people living in terrible conditions and saw a perfect chance for exploitation. They had no need to take kidneys by force. All they had to do was offer sums of money that would seem small to many people and then sell the organ for a huge profit elsewhere. Before long, people were lining up to sell their kidneys earning the camp its nickname.

6Religious Concerns

Organ transplants have not been around for a terribly long time, so for many religious people, the rules for how to ethically deal with this new medical procedure are not very cut and dried. In the Islamic faith, most spiritual leaders have come out in favor of organ transplantation but it has only done so much good. Many individuals are still wary due to religious laws on how to treat corpses and perform burial rites. This has led to a situation where the overwhelming majority of organ transplants in countries like Iran are taken from living donors so as not to offend religious sensibilities. Christians and Catholics are for the most part okay with the practice, but not all religions agree.

The Jewish faith takes an interesting stance on the issue. While not everything is cut and dried, and it varies from person to person to some extent, one of the major qualms comes from heart transplants. For the heart transplant to work, the organ has to still be beating in the donor when it comes time to perform the operation. Some Jewish people believe that true death does not occur simply with the death of the brain but once the heart has stopped beating as well. For people with this belief, it is hard to accept the process as ethical.

5New Field

Organ transplantation is a field that has been growing very quickly but still seems to be in the early stages of its life. This is because the first successful organ transplant was performed as recently as the early 1950s. The first organ transplant was a kidney, and it was done as a last resort. In the beginning, the patient seemed to be doing well but ended up dying not long after. This continued to be a problem with all of the early organ transplants until the doctors caught on to why the new organs were not working properly.

A surgeon named Peter Medawar had served in the war and taken note of people whose bodies had rejected skin grafts—another form of transplantation—and realized that it was caused by the patient’s immune system. Around the same time, a man needed a new kidney and his identical twin happily donated one of his. While the medical community didn’t have immunosuppressant drugs available at the time, the twin did quite well with such a well-matched organ. This, along with the work of Medawar, quickly made clear why organs were not being accepted—Medawar went on to win a Nobel Prize for his efforts.

4Life Expectancy

In the movies, the person gets their new organ and all is well, but no one mentions that their chances of surviving for very long aren’t statistically all that great. Many people with transplants are lucky to live for a decade or so afterward at best.

Scientists believe it all ties into the problem of organ rejection. Even if the match is almost perfect, your body will still be struggling to accept it for the rest of your life or you wouldn’t need to keep taking the drugs. This means that your body is constantly fighting against the organ and eventually it succeeds. However, with new and improved immunosuppressants and the best of today’s medical technology, transplant patients are living longer than ever.

Doctors have to keep a close eye on transplanted patients so we can get a good idea of how they are doing and track their health. Those who have had kidney transplants tend to be doing fairly well after five years as do those who have had liver transplants. However, when it comes to kidney transplants in particular, those who had a close matching donor and had the organ transplanted from a living individual have better chances of survival.

It’s still difficult for the average heart transplant patient to live for much longer, but the numbers are improving all the time. It’s hard to say for certain how much life expectancy will increase in transplant patients over the years, but the signs are good. Perhaps one day those with transplant patients will live on average about as long as anyone else.

3Waiting List Abuses

A waiting list for a new organ is sometimes a matter of life and death. There are lots of people waiting, and only the sickest are usually going to get organs. For many people, this can make them quite desperate and they will go to any length to get the organ they need for themselves or their loved ones as soon as humanly possible. And, while there are many good doctors and nurses who would never violate ethical principles for any reason, you can always find some bad eggs in any profession.

In Germany, a major scandal broke out in 2013 after it was discovered that many donation centers, and the doctors involved, were flat out lying about how sick patients were to move them further up the list. The investigation quickly uncovered well over 100 cases of what they called “obvious manipulation” and many other more subtle ethical violations.

In some cases, investigators found that blood had been deliberately contaminated with urine in order to falsify medical conditions. Some involved in the matter believe that there is a good chance a lot of money changed hands under the table for all of this to happen. Germany, like the rest of the world, already had an organ donor shortage problem, and unfortunately, the scandal caused a huge drop in organ donors in the country.

2Paired Exchange

When dealing with transplants, doctors often have to go through a crazy sort of juggling game to get the right organs in the right people. This can turn into a complicated magic act when you have someone who wants to donate a kidney to a friend or relative, but they are not much of a match. When this happens, the hospital will try to locate other people who are in the same predicament, and try to find a match between the two pairs of people.

This allows the kidney from one donor to go to the person they don’t know who was a match for their organ and vice versa, ensuring that both parties end up with functioning kidneys. These paired exchanges can involve more than just two pairs of people and can quickly make an already complicated process even more difficult to sort out.

Sometimes, the operations do not take place simultaneously which can cause strife and distrust between the patients involved in the process. However, for the most part, the paired exchange system is a helpful and totally voluntary way to help match appropriate donors and perform as many life-saving transplants as possible. While some people may be eager to take a gander at the person who gifted them with a new organ, paired exchange only allows for meeting after the entire operation has been completed. And, if the other parties do not wish to meet you, they are not in any way obligated to reveal who they are or interact with you in any way whatsoever.

13-D Printing Could Revolutionize Organ Transplantation

The recent emergence of 3-D printers promises to change the way we fabricate materials. With an advanced 3-D printer, people will someday be able to make almost anything at home with the proper raw materials. It should be no surprise that doctors have been looking at this cutting-edge technology and experimenting with how they can use it as a tool to advance the practice of medicine.

Their ultimate hope is that they will be able to use a 3-D printer to create fully functioning human organs. When the day comes that the process is truly refined, immunosuppressant drugs will finally be unnecessary because the patient’s own cells would be used in the making of the organ. This would ensure acceptance, and the ability to fabricate organs would mean we would never have a shortage again.

In recent work done jointly by Sydney University and Harvard University, researchers managed to make their way over a significant barrier. The problem was that they couldn’t figure out how to make blood vessels form properly, which would quickly sink a printed organ’s chances at survival. They used a 3-D printer to create tiny capillaries which then led to the formation of blood vessels they were hoping for. Dr. Luiz Bertassoni, the man in charge of the project, cautions people not to jump to the conclusion that we can already start printing fully functioning 3-D organs. While he hopes that we will achieve the technology sooner, he believes it will still be a couple of decades before we advance that far.

Organ donors and transplants save the lives of millions each year that are suffering from diseases or disorders that deem their own organs unusable. While most operations go on without a hitch, here are some of the most bizarre stories ever recorded regarding transplants. From the transplant of a womb to a man demand his donated kidney back, these stories are definitely out of the ordinary.

10. Which Child Would You Choose?

Sometimes parents are faced with the question of which child they would pick if they had to choose. For most, this question is unanswerable and completely hypothetical, but not for Antony Levin who was forced to choose which child would have their life saved by his donated kidney. At the age of three his daughter Jade was found to have degenerative kidney disease and only a year later their five-year-old son, Keegan, was found to be suffering from the same genetic disorder. The Levins had three children, the first was unaffected, but the genetic disorder continued to affect each progressive child more and more. Jade had shown more severe symptoms early on to the point where she was going through dialysis up to three times a week. Their parents knew it would come to a point where they would have to choose which child to save and which to put on the waiting list, but Jade’s time came first. Antony had to undergo four months of preparation and despite the dangers; his kidney was shown to be a perfect match for Jade. Luckily, Jade and Antony’s procedure went perfectly, but Keegan continues to get worse. As his kidney’s give up, he is forced to go on dialysis and must wait until a matched kidney shows up for him.

9. Caroline Burns Wakes Up

Imagine waking up to find yourself laying on an operating table surrounded by doctors a few seconds away from splitting you open to harvest your organs for transplant patients. This is exactly the kind of situation Caroline Burns was facing after she was pronounced dead from a severe drug overdose. Burns had woken up just in time before doctors had the chance t actually carry out the procedure. Despite several signs of improvement, Burns had be declared dead after she was unresponsive for quite some time and placed on life support. Doctors had assumed that since they were unable to administer charcoal to soak up the excess drugs in her system, her death was inevitable. Unbeknownst to doctors, Burns continued to fight for her life while on the ventilator. Her toes and tongue began to move, as she was even able to start breathing for herself. After several CT scans, doctors told her family the brain damage was irreversible and she was taken off the respirator. Lucky for her, they hadn’t yet cut her open though her timing was definitely too close for comfort.

8. Self-Grown Face Transplant

For most people that have their faces severely disfigured there aren’t very many options for improvement. That is until a 17-year-old named Xu Jianmei was able to get a new lease on life after she had a face transplant grown… on her chest. Jianmei’s face was severely disfigured during a fire when she was a young girl and because of this, she was left without a chin, eyelids, and parts of her right ear. Now Jianmei isn’t the first to receive a face transplant, but it’s the manner in which it was grown that makes this story so amazing. Using the tissue on her chest, blood vessels from her leg, and a balloon to expand the skin, Jianmei was able to grow her very own face transplant in just a matter of months. She has undergone the procedures to have her face reconstructed, all of which have been successful. Doctors say that within time all her scars will be replaced with fresh skin and she will even be able to blush again, something that was never thought to be remotely possible. Several more of these self-grown transplants are beginning to take place as the procedure catches on.

7. Meliha Avc? Gets an Organ From Her Husband’s Other Lover

It seems that there aren’t too many good things that could come from your husband cheating on you as your suffer from kidney failure and must undergo dialysis for 12 hours a week. However this is not the case for Meliha Avci, a Turkish woman that whose life was saved after receiving a kidney from her cheating husbands lover. Her husband, Mehmet Avci, met his mistress, Ayse Imdat, as Meliha underwent her treatments. Mehmet and Ayse’s affair even went as far as having Ayse move into their house as a “babysitter”. At the time, Meliha had no clue what was going on between them, but was shocked to find out later that the woman who stole her husband had given her a kidney in return. Apparently Ayse felt it was the least she could do for Meliha after ruining her marriage. The transplant was quite successful and Meliha bears no ill will towards Ayse, even requesting that Mehmet and Ayse get married after she passes.

6. Martin Warburton’s Transplant Contract

As most people know, the British take their football allegiances very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that a man named Martin Warburton made his brother sign a contract to change his allegiance to Manchester United FC before giving him the vital blood transplant that his brother, Paul, was in need of. With Martin strongly supporting Manchester United and Paul backing the Blues, Martin found his desperation for a transplant the perfect opportunity to squash their ongoing rivalry. Paul was diagnosed with lymphatic leukemia and given a very grim outlook on life if he didn’t receive the matching red stem cells that his brother Martin jut happened to have. The contract was signed and sealed by Paul promising that he would “pledge his allegiance forever to Manchester United for receiving these magnificent red cells. Chortle at regular intervals when Manchester City is relegated. Laugh hysterically when Afro Kev Keegan loses his cool yet again at the frustration of not being able to match Sir Alex Ferguson. Join the Manchester United FC supporters association. Change the exterior and interior decoration of his home to red. [And lastly,] All windows to have red stained glass.”

5. Perfect Kidney Transplant Thrown Away

Kidney transplants aren’t something that come around everyday, so when someone in dire need of a kidney is given the opportunity to receive one, it’s a very big deal. Unfortunately for Sarah Fudacz, her answered prayers were literally thrown away when a nurse mistakenly dumped her brother’s donated kidney into the garbage. Her brother, Paul Jr. had been determined to be a perfect match for Sarah and had undergone his surgery without any complications. As the transplant kidney was waiting to be carried into Sarah’s room, it was sitting in a slush machine to keep it usable. A nurse who had just returned from lunch then took the machine and disposed of it along with the rest of the garbage from Paul Jr.’s surgery. The University of Toledo expressed its deepest apologies to the family and arranged for Sarah to receive another immediate kidney transplant. Despite the success of the transplant, the Fudaczs still sued the hospital for its negligence.

4. Six Organ Transplant

Undergoing transplant surgery to have just one of your organs replaced is a dangerous and time-consuming ordeal. Now imagine being only 9-years-old and having to undergo an unprecedented six-organ transplant surgery. Alannah Shevenell was suffering from a myofibroblastic tumor encircling her blood supply and squeezing her esophagus shut, making her unable to eat. Her future seemed to be bleak until a last ditch effort found her a matching transplant donor for a new liver, stomach, spleen, pancreas, esophagus, and small intestine. The surgery took over 14 hours, but proved to be a huge success. Not only did the surgeons have to perform the six transplants, they had to remove the tumor off of her existing organs as well. Aside from having to remain on anti-rejection medication the rest of her life, Alannah is now back to normal and better than ever.

3. Susie’s New Heart Makes Her Straight

A woman only known by Susie was in desperate need of a heart transplant after suffering from cardiomyopathy secondary to endocarditis. The heart was quickly donated to Susie by a 19-year-old girl named Sara after she was killed in a car crash. Prior to the transplant, Susie was a lesbian and known for her strong argumentative views on gay rights and gay politics. Along with being a huge advocate of gay rights, she had a strong dislike for men and how they treated women.  She was also well known for her love of junk food especially that of McDonald’s. Following the transplant Susie and her family began noticing some drastic changes in her behavior. She suddenly had a disgust of meat even getting sick at the sight of it despite being an avid McDonalds fan. The doctors brushed off these claims by saying it was a reaction to her medicine. The most bizarre part of this transplant story was Susie’s change in sexual orientation. After receiving her knew heart, Susie found herself turned on and in love with men in a way she’d never before experienced even getting rid of all her old gay memorabilia. She found herself incredibly confused as she quickly found a boyfriend she fell in love with and while she was still attracted to girls, guys offered her much more of a mental, emotional, and physiological reaction than they ever had before.  She also found herself reliving her donor’s accident every night even feeling as if she was taking part in it. After an interview with Sara’s mother it was found that she was both an avid vegan and quite boy-crazy. Her mom described her as a girl with a wild personality who loved to date and have fun. As she died, Sara had written to her mother how the accident had felt went it occurred, which closely matched Susie’s account of the experience every night.

2. Demi-Lee Brennan’s New Organ Changes Her Blood Type

One of the biggest issues with organ transplants is finding the correct match with one’s own blood type to stop the receiver’s body from attacking the new organ. Demi-Lee Brennan, however, didn’t have this problem being that she is the first known case of having her immune system and blood type match that of the organ she was given. Doctors were absolutely baffled by the occurrence calling it nearly impossible. Demi-Lee began the ordeal with O-negative blood before receiving a liver from a little boy to replace her own that was destroyed by a virus. After receiving the organ, her condition began to grow worse and doctors feared that the new liver hadn’t been accepted. As she grew more and more ill, doctors decide to take another blood test only to find that she had changed blood type to O-positive, the same as the liver she was given. The reason she was getting so ill wasn’t that her body rejected the organ, but that her body was rejecting her old blood type because of the immune-suppressants she was being given for the transplant. Amazingly, while all other transplant patients are forced to stay on immuno-suppressants for the rest of their lives to keep from their body rejecting the organ, Demi-Lee doesn’t need them and is actually much better off without them. She has fully recovered since the operation with no further complications.

1. Claire Sylvia Matches Her Donor

Doctors have long debated the plausibility of transplant patients taking on traits of the organ donors. A woman named Claire Sylvia is one of the most interesting case studies used to back the idea of “cellular memory”. After receiving a heart and lung organ transplant from an 18 year old killed in a motorcycle accident, Sylvia began noticing some drastic changes in her personality for no apparent reason. She was in need of the organs after she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and was brought to Yale to have the operation. Following the transplant, she found herself taking on much more manly traits than usual with her favorite color changing from pink to green and blue as well as a newfound love for beer and junk food that she had always hated prior to the transplant. Even more eerie was when Sylvia began having dreams of motorcycle accidents and a man named TL. She decided to investigate these odd changes and soon looked up the obituary of the man that had been her donor, Tim Lamirande. The similarities between the two became incredibly bizarre after Sylvia took a trip to talk to Lamirande family about their son’s personality. She found that he loved beer and junk food as well as green peppers and France. Sylvia had also found herself with a strong urge to visit the country as well as a love for peppers that she previously avoided at all costs. Her dreams grew more bizarre a she dreamt of 22 roaring motorcycles engines in celebration of some unknown event only to wake up and realize the next day would have been Tim’s 22nd birthday. While some scientists are highly skeptical of “cellular memory” Sylvia’s case is one of the most exact and well-known cases of it. Sylvia even went on to write a book entitled A Change of Heart to keep a record of her bizarre similarities to Tim. Whether or not it exists, no one can deny the bizarre similarities found between the donor and receiver.

There were 39,000 organ transplants performed in 2020. That’s a lot of potentially life-saving operations. But it’s also worth noting that there are 106,572 people on donor lists. So the need far outweighs the ability to fill it. That’s part of the reason why there are some rigorous standards in place to qualify for an organ transplant. Unfortunately, not all of those standards and reasons turn out to be good ones. 

10. Criminal History

When a hospital considers the reasons for or against giving someone a transplant, they will inevitably settle on one in particular when it comes to denials. If a patient who needs a liver doesn’t stop drinking, that’s a cause to deny the transplant. Likewise, a lung transplant patient will be denied if they keep smoking. But sometimes they’ll offer up more esoteric reasons like “noncompliance.”

In organ transplant terms, that can mean a lot of things, like a fear that the patient won’t follow through on steps to ensure a healthy recovery after the fact. Back in 2013, for 15-year-old Anthony Stokes, noncompliance was the reason he was denied a life-saving heart transplant. Officially, it meant that the boy had a history of poor grades and spending time in juvenile detention. So, basically, the hospital refused to save his life because he had a criminal history. At age 15. 

After the story got out, the hospital miraculously reviewed their position and changed their mind. The boy, who was given six months to live, was granted the surgery and received a transplant. In one final, tragic twist, two years later Stokes died in a car crash after fleeing police.

9. Vaccination Status

The Covid-19 pandemic has had more ups and downs than a Pogo stick, but one thing that slowly grew out of it was the divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Those who remain unvaccinated found that more and more of the world was becoming unwelcoming to them. Restaurants, movie theaters and borders were closed to those who couldn’t prove their vaccine status. And if you can’t eat indoors at a restaurant without being vaccinated, maybe it makes sense that you can’t get a lung transplant, either. 

With over half of the world vaccinated, including about 64% of the United States, hospitals have begun cracking down on the unvaccinated in some serious ways. Most noticeably when they denied a heart transplant to 31-year-old DJ Ferguson, in part because he remains unvaccinated.

According to the hospital, they take vaccine-status and lifestyle choices into account when determining who qualifies for the very limited number of organ transplants towards the goal of ensuring the best chance of survival for recipients. In other words, if you aren’t willing to get vaccinated against a disease that will probably kill you thanks to your compromised post-transplant immune system, they’re not going to bother with the procedure in the first place. After a transplant, a patient’s immune system barely exists at all, so the vaccine is essential in their eyes. 

8. The Numbers Game

Around 40% of the fruits and vegetables produced on farms is trashed before consumers ever get to see it for no other reason than because it’s ugly. Imperfect produce is considered unsellable, so it’s not even sold, which is a huge waste. Who wants an imperfect apple, right? Probably a lot of people, but that’s neither here nor there. And it turns out this same attitude applies to human organs.

Imperfect organs, by whatever metric one uses to determine such a label, began being turned away with a change to federal standards in 2007. This was essentially an issue of the bottom line. Imperfect organs make for higher risk surgeries, just like a recipient who is extremely ill. The more risky a surgery is, the less likely it is to be successful. If too many unsuccessful surgeries are performed, a hospital’s rankings go down and they will receive less federal funding. So, in order to keep their ratings high, they simply perform fewer transplants and only go for what they consider the “sure thing” surgeries. 

This point of view flies in the face of what transplant surgeries are meant to do in the first place, and the idea that the sickest people deserve the organs first. After a report outlining this was issued, standards were changed to allow hospitals to have more surgical fails without losing funding, but it still seems to be a metric by which funding is gauged.

7. Patients Rejected for Being Too Poor

Imagine learning that your heart is failing and if you want to survive, you will need a transplant. We already know that there are 100,000 people waiting for organs and only a fraction of that many to go around. But assuming you’re in otherwise good health and check all the right boxes for qualifications, you have to be near the top of the list. Now imagine finding out the average cost of a heart transplant is over $1.3 million. 

It seems weird to suggest that you can be denied a life saving procedure because you can’t afford it, but it turns out you can. Hedda Martin was denied a heart transplant because her finances were not up to the task of covering the job. The hospital recommended she start a fundraiser to pull in at least $10,000. 

Patients are routinely required to prove they can pay in advance before any progress is made on a potential transplant. While a heart is the most expensive, even a kidney can cost up to $400,000. Plus, there are anti-rejection drugs that cost $2500 a month and you need to take them for exactly as long as you plan to live after the surgery. 

Many recipients start GoFundMe campaigns, but if the money doesn’t flow, neither do the organs. 

6. Potential Disability Risk

Obviously as lay people, we are not privy to the same information medical professionals have when deciding who gets an organ transplant and, in effect, who lives and who dies. But we can make some assumptions that align with what makes sense. What should be right in a subjective sense. When we hear that a baby needs a heart transplant, that seems like a no-brainer to us. Of course, a baby moves to the top of the list. It’s a baby. 

In 2013, a 5-month-old baby born with a heart defect was denied a heart transplant. Two surgeries had already failed, and he was in heart failure. He was going to die. Doctors said his condition put him at risk of tumors and infections. But when his mother researched his condition online, she couldn’t find a single mention of that being the case. A doctor confirmed it to her.

One thing she did know was that children with her son’s condition often grew up to have serious disabilities and that was what she believed the true reason was. The same thing had happened to a three-year-old girl who needed a kidney transplant. And while it’s been known that intellectual disabilities will keep people off the transplant list, which we’ll get into shortly, this was a preemptive strike on a baby who hadn’t even had time to develop one way or the other. 

5. Intellectual Disabilities

One of the biggest moral questions the healthcare industry has dealt with in regards to transplants is what should disqualify a person from receiving one. And no issue is more debated than intellectual disabilities. To some, it’s literally considered a waste of an organ to transplant it into someone with an intellectual disability.

Unsurprisingly, the issue comes up, is tossed around in the media, and maybe even some petitions are signed. But not a lot of progress is made. As late as 2021, there was some hope that the issue of disability discrimination might get before Congress. There is still no official rule on the books and hospitals around the country continue to deny transplants to those with intellectual disabilities on the grounds that they are not able to properly care for themselves and therefore cannot get the most out of the organ. 

4. Faulty Test Results

There are as many as 12 million diagnostic test errors in America every year. Tens of thousands of people die per year as a result of medical errors, upwards of 22,000 according to recent research, with some of those numbers undoubtedly the result of testing errors. But what happens when testing is needed to determine who gets organ transplants? Well, that can screw up, too.

A woman who needed a liver transplant found herself rejected from the list when doctors determined she’d been drinking alcohol. Obviously, that’d be a big disqualifier for a liver. You don’t want to give someone a new one that they’re just going to destroy. But the problem was, the woman hadn’t been drinking.

The problem with testing for things like this is doctors are predisposed to not believe patients when they have contradictory evidence. And they’re not necessarily wrong about that, lots of patients lie. But that doesn’t mean they all do.  In this case, it turned out the woman’s bladder was producing its own alcohol. After looking into the case more, she was eventually reconsidered for a transplant. 

3. Marijuana Use

36 states currently allow for the use of medical marijuana and half that allow for its recreational use. A number of countries around the world have also legalized, or at least decriminalized, its use in many circumstances as well. 

Despite its legality, there have been cases where transplants were denied to people using it as it was legally prescribed. Timothy Garon died after being denied a liver because of his marijuana use. The hospital said that was not the sole factor in determining any patient’s eligibility, but Garon’s lawyer disagreed. 

Garon’s doctor had prescribed marijuana for him to deal with the nausea and pain caused by his condition. The hospital said he had to be off the drug for six months, but he didn’t even have that long to live. They recommended a 60-day program, but his condition was too advanced for that as well. 

2. History of Alcohol Abuse

More than once now, we’ve addressed the idea that a person might be denied a transplant based on their history of substance abuse. In particular, a person can be denied a liver if they have a history of drinking. On paper, that makes sense. But in practice, it can often be discriminatory.

An indigenous Canadian woman was denied a liver transplant based on her history of alcohol use. It was suspected that acetaminophen had actually caused her liver damage, and though she had a drinking problem in the past, she was apparently sober at the time she needed the surgery. Nonetheless, she was denied.

An indigenous man from BC was also denied after he failed to meet a six-month abstinence policy the province of BC had set up for those in need of a liver. Indigenous Canadians have disproportionately high rates of alcoholism in their communities due to a number of systemic conditions, ranging from abuses in residential schools, poverty, and racist policies that severely impacted their abilities to thrive and even survive in Canada. The abstinence requirement was challenged as being discriminatory on those grounds.  

The policy was alleged to be rescinded in 2018, although the case we just mentioned happened in 2019. The transplant board called this a mistake, and the man was put back on the list to have a transplant. 

1. Father Violated Probation

The only thing worse than being denied an organ for something you’ve done is being denied for something someone else did. That’s what happened to two-year-old AJ Burgess.

Burgess was born prematurely and in need of a kidney. His father was a perfect match and had a kidney to spare. Seemed like a no-brainer. But the hospital refused to perform the transplant because the father had served time for a parole violation. The hospital stated that they needed parole and probation information so they could see he had been on his best behavior for three or four months before they would perform the transplant. 

Luckily, after the outcry, another matching kidney was found and Burgess got a transplant after all.