Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First Successful Penis Transplant Surgery Raises Unusual Questions
He had already been talking to the grieving family for hours when he got the call from his bosses at the New England Organ Bank. The patient who had just died, they said, looked like a good candidate to donate more than just his kidneys and lungs. Would the family be willing to donate his penis? Even under normal circumstances, Daniel Miller-Dempsey鈥檚 job can sound impossible. When a patient is declared brain-dead, but is still on life support, he asks the family about removing their loved one鈥檚 organs and putting them into other people. The patient鈥檚 lungs are still breathing, the heart still pumping, the skin still pulsing with blood. 鈥淵ou have to have a family get to a point where they understand that [their loved one] has died, even though they look the same as they did the day before,鈥 he said. (Boodman, 5/20)
The recipient of the nation's first penis transplant says he is looking forward to walking out of the hospital a "complete" man. "There is no doubt in my mind that everything is going to work. And I mean everything," 64-year-old Thomas Manning said Wednesday with a grin as he continued to recover at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. "You can interpret that any way you wish." (5/19)