New Article: Cohen et al, Deceased Organ Donor Characteristics and Organ Utilization in Israel

Cohen, Jonathan, Yael Bistritz, and Tamar Ashkenazi. “Deceased Organ Donor Characteristics and Organ Utilization in Israel, 2004–2013.” Israeli Medical Association Journal 17.6 (2015): 365-9.

 

URL: http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ViewArticle.aspx?aId=3682  [PDF]

 

Abstract

Background: The number of patients awaiting organ transplantation continues to exceed the number of available organs.

Objectives: To document changes in the demographic characteristics of brain-dead, heart-beating organ donors over the past 10 years which may impact on organ utilization.

Methods: Data were extracted from the Israel Transplant Registry and the Donor Action database for the 10 year period 2004–2013, inclusive.

Results: The median age of the donors increased from 44 (range 3–73 years) to 53.5 years (range 1–79 years) (P < 0.001). There was a significant increase in the median age of donors of kidney (33 to 51 years, P < 0.001), liver (41 to 53 years, P < 0.001) and lung (40 to 49.5 years, P < 0.001). The number of donors dying from trauma decreased (34.5% to 20%, P < 0.001), while those with anoxic brain damage increased (14.5% to 25%, P < 0.001). The percent of male donors decreased over the study period, from 63% to 53%. An increase was noted in the mean number of organs transplanted per donor, from 3.29 to 3.82 per donor, due mainly to a significant increase in the utilization of lungs (31.5% to 51.3%, P < 0.001) and livers (76.3% to 82.4%, P < 0.001) while heart utilization decreased significantly since 2006 (40.9% to 17.5%, P < 0.001).

Conclusion: Trends in the heart-beating, brain-dead organ donor pool in Israel over the past 10 years reveal significant changes in demographic characteristics which in the future will impact on the number of organs available for transplantation.

New Book: Green, Organ Transplantation (in Hebrew)

Green, Yossi. Organ Transplantation. Legislation, Ruling and Practice. Tel Aviv: Resing, 2015 (in Hebrew).

 

 

 

After three decades of discussions and disputes in the Knesset and the general public, two laws passed in 2008: the organ transplantation law (2008), and the respiratory brain death law (2008). Both of these laws are supposed to regulate the procedures for organ transplantation, to overcome the ongoing shortage of organs for transplantation and at the same time prevent the development of negative phenomena which are contrary to the values ​​of the State of Israel.

This book focuses on the legal aspect of organ transplant procedure in Israel. It serves as an annotated and clear summary of the legal approach, relevant not only to jurists and lawyers, but also to an audience of “consumers” – i.e. organ donors and their families and patients awaiting transplant surgery and their families. The author analyzes the law and its provisions by each section to allow anyone interested to become familiar with the intricacies of its implications. In addition, each section is supplemented with cumulative legal knowledge, as well as remarks and reservations concerning the feasibility of the law in the future. Moreover, alongside a practical analysis, the author presents a broad picture of the substantive issues, allowing the reader to examine all the considerations taken into account before the legislator formulated the final version of the law.

The subjects discussed in the book include: the prohibition on organ trade, the feasibility of altruistic organ donation, the status of the National Transplant Center and its functions, the power of the assessment committees responsible for the permit of organ donation, the procedures for taking organs from the living and the dead, including the legal validity of that Adi cards and the “in my heart” cards. The priority procedure for patients awaiting a transplant is also examined from a critical standpoint.

New Article: Boas et al, The Impact of the Israeli Transplantation Law on the Profile of Kidney Donors

Boas, H., E. Mor, R. Michowitz, B. Rozen-Zvi, and R. Rahamimov. “The Impact of the Israeli Transplantation Law on the Socio-Demographic Profile of Living Kidney Donors.” American Journal of Transplantation 15.4 (2015): 1076-80.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajt.13090

 

Abstract

The Israeli transplantation law of 2008 stipulated that organ trading is a criminal offense, and banned the reimbursement of such transplants by insurance companies, thus decreasing dramatically transplant tourism from Israel. We evaluated the law’s impact on the number and the socio-demographic features of 575 consecutive living donors, transplanted in the largest Israeli transplantation center, spanning 5 years prior to 5 years after the law’s implementation. Living kidney donations increased from 3.5 ± 1.5 donations per month in the pre-law period to 6.1 ± 2.4 per month post-law (p < 0.001). This was mainly due to a rise in intra-familial donations from 2.1 ± 1.1 per month to 4.6 ± 2.1 per month (p < 0.001). In unrelated donors we found a significant change in their socio-demographic characteristics: mean age increased from 35.4 ± 7.4 to 39.9 ± 10.2 (p = 0.001), an increase in the proportion of donors with college level or higher education (31.0% to 63.1%; p < 0.001) and donors with white collar occupations (33.3% to 48.3%, p = 0.023). In conclusion, the Israeli legislation that prohibited transplant tourism and organ trading in accordance with Istanbul Declaration, was associated with an increase in local transplantation activity, mainly from related living kidney donors, and a change in the profile of unrelated donors into an older, higher educated, white collar population.

 
 

New Book: Meydani, The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel

Meydani, Assaf. The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel. Constitutional Rhetoric and State Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

 

 

Why is there such a large gap between the declarations that countries make about human rights and their imperfect implementation of them? Why do states that have enacted laws and signed treaties about human rights choose to not enforce these laws in daily life? Why have activists failed to achieve the goals of ensuring human rights domestically and internationally? This book examines the issue of human rights in the Israeli domestic arena by analyzing the politics and strategies of defending human rights. To do so, it integrates the tools of social choice theory with a unique institutionalist perspective that looks at both formal and informal, and local and international factors. The book offers an analysis explaining the processes through which Israel is struggling to promote human rights within a specific institutional environment, thus determining the future of Israeli democracy and its attitude toward human rights.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Institutional theory and social choice studies: understanding the anatomy of human rights
3. Human rights between constitutional rhetoric and state practice
4. Structural and cultural variables favoring a short-term orientation
5. The right to be free from the threat of torture in light of structural and cultural complexity
6. The right to equality: gender segregation on ultra-orthodox buses following the Israeli High Court of Justice ruling on the ‘segregation lines’ in 2011
7. The right to enjoy a decent lifestyle: the case of the Laron law – national insurance law (amendment no. 109, 2008) encouraging the disabled to work
8. The human rights commission in Israel that never was
9. Property rights – the issue of designing policy about the separation fence – the High Court of Justice case: Beit Sureiq Village v. the State of Israel, 2004
10. The right to human dignity and liberty: the organ transplant law, 5768 (2008)
11. Policy evaluation: analyzing the reality for human rights.

URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/anatomy-human-rights-israel-constitutional-rhetoric-and-state-practice