What is an Allograft?

Well, it was not until I requested and received my hospital records that I even knew I had an allograft. The doctor did not mention the possibility before and did not mention it being done afterward. I would have liked to have a choice. And what does it mean that the records show an expiration date?

@hyrax53, I think you meant to say "isograft".

Anyway, I think it is interesting too, I have also read that book. Also, I am assuming that the storyline's concept of a younger sister who is an ideal donor giving is also an isograft, because she had the right genetics; there does not seem to be a term particularly for relatives who donate to one another.

This article's mention of "xenograft" as the term for when a twin donates to another twin makes me think of the book by Jodi Picoult called "My Sister's Keeper". In it, a young couple's daughter is diagnosed with serious, potentially terminal cancer at a very young age. Because they know that they will have to continue having someone to donate to her, the parents have a new child, one of the first "test tube babies", of all of the best genetic material for this sister. The new, younger girl then rebels against her parents at age 13 when asked to donate a kidney to her sister through allograft and refuses to do so.

There was also a movie made, I think two years ago, but they missed a lot of important details and even totally changed the ending, which I think ruined the entire circular nature of the book. While I don't know if something like that would really happen or not, it raised many important questions about both written and moral law, the value of parenting, and how we really view our own bodies and the bodies of others these days. Like many of Picoult's books, I felt it made me ask myself a lot of questions I had never even imagined before.

I read an article a few months ago that the quality of allografts from cadavers has generally been lowering in quality in recent years. Part of this is because, ironically, medical care has improved so much in other areas, as has safety in automobiles and other forms of travel. Fewer people die in accidents, and fewer people die from less threatening diseases and medical problems, leaving the pot of available organs for donors much smaller.

In the article I read, this was an issue when, after she had died of another complication, a father found out his terminally ill daughter would have been given a pair of lungs that had belonged to a heavy smoker. While he admitted her life might still have been extended, the father was outraged that such low quality organs might be considered, except that those are what seem to be left for transplant operations these days.