News Brief

Another reason to think twice about being an organ donor

The FDA remains ever-vigilant about “protecting” citizens from health claims about effective vitamin supplements. Yet, for years, they have been giving a pass to a dangerous surgical device. Faulty surgical clips that are outright killing some of the most generous people on the planet. Those who are donating a kidney to someone else in need.

CNN reported this scandal just a few months ago—on June 21st. But some transplant surgeons say that this has been going on for years. And that the FDA has been completely inadequate in warning surgeons and hospitals about the dangers of these surgical clips in kidney donors.

And what makes this scandal doubly a shame is that, for decades, kidney transplantation has been the one unequivocal organ donation success story. There’s much more to say about the burgeoning “organ transplant industry..” I’ll give you the full story in a future issue of Insiders’ Cures. But, for now, since there are no words to adequately express the irony here, I’ll let my poetic instincts take over:

While FDA has plenty to say
about what not to say about supplements,
their answer to this latest scandal
has been “no comment.”