Kidney Transplants: Guest Speaker

On Thursday, we had a guest speaker named Tina come in and talk to us about her experiences with failed kidneys. Because of a genetic reoccurance, both of her kidneys failed. Her good friend generously gave Tina one of her own kidneys, but that one failed as well. She explained that by this point she was very frightened and highly frusterated. She thought she was going to die. But amazingly, she was given another kidney by someone who had died in a car accident. She also mentioned that she has four kineys (they don't remove the failed ones),  but she only has one working one. Tina said that the genetic kidney failure that runs in her family on both sides tends to skip every other generation. In other words, her grandparents had it, her parents didn't, and she did. She also explained that she is grateful for her terrible experiences because they taught her the value of life. "These experiences taught me to see how lucky I am for every moment that I have to live on this planet." -Quote from Tina

Organ Transplants for Felons: Article Summary

Should rights to organ transplants be given to convicted felons in equal value to innocent people? Does it seem right to save a criminal's life and let another innocent person die? Steve Wiegand of the Sacramento Bee explains that inmates have the same right to medical care as any other citizen. He is quoted, "Since then, hundreds of subsequent cases have established that inmates have a right to medical care equal to that of the public in general." In this article by Ph.D David L. Perry, he talks about a convicted felon in California that was given a new heart in 2002. My personal reaction to the article is that if a criminal is in prison for something other than threatening lives in any way, they should have another chance at life and therefore have an equal right to organ transplants. But if the criminal has killed, raped, or threatened someone's life in any way, they should not get the organ. Their life is no more valuble than anyone else's.

To Start Off...

Hello! My name is Clara and I go to Animas High School. This is my blog for all the projects I do in my biology class this year. For the first semester, we will be focusing on the human body and will be disecting some animals toward the end. I'm not quite sure what we're doing second semester--but I guess I'll find out. Anyway, I've been looking forward to this class all summer and I'm super excited to learn more about biology!!!