Essay On Organ Transplants

Organ Transplants
Organ transplants were possibly one of the greatest things to happen to science. So many people have had their live saved because of receiving an organ donated from a family member or a stranger. The history of organ transplants go way back. And though there are cons along with the pros, but in the end organ transplants are all worth it.
The idea of organ transplants has been around for centuries, tracing back to myths by ancient Greeks and other early civilizations but people were unable to perform any surgeries for many years because they did not have the right technology and science to keep someone alive with a transplant. In the 1700’s, a Swiss naturalist, Abraham Trembley, observed the powers of organ regeneration in a tiny pond animal he called the hydra but could not do much with the information he gathered (Markovitz 98). It was in the early 1900’s when doctors started to try transplanting organs from one living thing to another. During this time, European doctors had patients dying of renal failure. In order to save them, they transplanted kidneys from different animals into them such as monkeys, pigs, and goats. Unfortunately, they were not successful and the patients never lived for more than a few days. Though organ transplants had not been successful, in 1905, Eduard Zirm, an Austrian ophthalmologist, was able to perform the world’s first corneal transplant. The procedure gave sight to a man who had been blinded in an accident. It was a good start to human transplants, but they were still a long way away. “In 1912, Alexis Carrell received a Nobel Prize for his work in the field. The French surgeon had developed methods for connecting blood vessels and conducted successful transplants on d...

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...hey don’t work as well as real organs, I think it would be beneficial to many more people especially because there aren’t enough natural organs available (Harris 4). Many other countries allow people to sell their organs and it could help people out here in the United States as well. “If laws were changed so that organs could be purchased and sold, some people would give not out of altruism, but for the financial gain. The result would be an increased supply of organs” (“First Successful Kidney Transplant Performed”). I don’t see a problem with people donating organs for their own selfish reasons as long as it is keeping other people alive.
In conclusion, I think organ transplants are a good thing. There are risks involved in it but I think it is worth it. For almost every problem involving organ transplants, there is a solution or will be one in the future.