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As someone who got from an organ transplant, I'd still push for self-driving car and safer cars. My hope is pig organ transplants make it through trials soon. That could push a 7 year wait for kidney transplant down to a year which is a big deal because the long time on dialysis can have a lasting impact.


Couldn't we just make donation opt out and solve the problem?


US has the second highest deceased organ donor rate after Spain despite US being opt-in.

https://www.irodat.org/?p=database#data

I worry about a public opinion chaining on switching to opt-out in the US so it has to evaluated carefully.

I'm guessing the US wait time is long because there are a lot of people with failing kidneys due to poorly managed diabetes and high blood pressure. But there are a whole host of auto immune and genetic diseases also.

Now we have better drugs for treating diabetes like Ozempic and SGLT so hopefully that improves the situation for kidney failures caused by diabetes.

I myself had an auto immune disease IgA nephropathy 10 years back but at that time there were hardly any drugs targeting it. I've since was on dialysis and recently got a kidney transplant. But the positive at the same time a half dozen drugs have been approved or under trial to slow down the progression of IgA nephropathy.




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