49 percent of last year's lung donors in the UK were smokers

by Blad Tolstoy

Well, just kicking off the new year with a story that the mainstream British media didn't want you to read. Indeed, this story was left to CNN to break, and so, if you weren't watching CNN anywhere, you'd have missed it. Nevertheless, as the details reveal, 49 percent of last year's lung donors in the UK were smokers.

See: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/12/28/shortage.organ.transplant/index.html


Yes, the story came to light because one of the recipients of a smoker's lung transplant - Corporal Matthew Millington, 31 - died less than a year after receiving a double lung transplant from a donor who may have smoked more than 50 cigarettes a day.

This story raises many issues, many of which can be read in the above linked article. However, there are also a number of issues that aren't raised.

One of these is given that out of 49 percent of lung transplants undertaken, only one turned out to have an obvious negative result. Another issue is that despite the castigation of smokers and the
refusal by a number of hospitals to treat them even for non-smoking related diseases and problems, it remains sickening to discover just how great a percentage of smokers' lungs were "harvested" when it suited the convenience of the medical profession to do so.

There have been numerous stories from America over the years about the use of smokers' lungs for transplants, but now we have the proof for ourselves just how handy we all are when it comes to our body parts being used to save lives.

The last issue is that this story also illustrates how much exaggeration goes on with regard to the number of smokers who contract lung cancer. If the risk were anything like as great as is portrayed by the government, the medical authorities and the NGOs of tobacco control, then under no circumstances could one imagine any responsible surgeon taking the risk of transplanting smokers' lungs.