SCIENCE IN THE NEWS

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS
By

Broadcast: Tuesday, April 27, 2004

VOICE ONE:

This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS, in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty¹.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Faith Lapidus. Our subject this week is medical transplant operations.

 
Monica di Matteo, left, of Italy holds her baby daughter Alessia, who received eight new organs in January at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. Here, Dr. Andreas Tzakis, who led the transplant operation, appears at a news conference in March.
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VOICE ONE:

Doctors perform transplants to replace organs or tissue in a person who is sick or injured.

There are records of a transplant operation that took place in eighteen-twenty-three. A German doctor, Carl Bunger, removed skin from a woman's leg and used it to rebuild her nose.

Scientists later showed that the defense² system in the body tries to reject tissue transplanted from other people.

VOICE TWO:

Rejection³ continued to be a problem for transplants well into the twentieth century. In nineteen-fifty-eight, the French doctor Jean Dausset discovered a system to match tissue. This is a way to make sure that the tissue to be transplanted is closely similar to the patient's own.

In nineteen-seventy-two, the Swiss scientist Jean Borel discovered that the drug cyclosporine could stop the rejection. Cyclosporine is made from a fungus⁴ that lives in soil. Experts say this drug is the most important reason for the success of transplant operations today.

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VOICE ONE:

More than twenty different organs and tissues can be transplanted from one person to another. Clinical Transplants is a publication that reports each year on the numbers of such operations around the world. It is published by researchers at U.C.L.A., the University of California, Los Angeles.

They say doctors performed more than fifty-thousand successful transplant operations in two-thousand-three. Close to thirty-thousand of these were kidney transplants. Kidneys are the organ most commonly transplanted.

The success rate of such transplants is very high. A family member often can provide a kidney for transplant. People have two kidneys, but usually need only one.

Some kidney transplant patients have survived for more than thirty years. A spokeswoman at U.C.L.A. says one transplanted kidney has been working for forty-one years.

VOICE TWO:

Another commonly transplanted organ is the liver. The liver is the only organ in the body that can grow to normal size from a small piece. Doctors can remove part of a liver from a person and place it into a patient who has liver failure.

After the operation, both livers will grow to full size. Clinical Transplants says more than ten-thousand liver transplants took place around the world in two-thousand-three.

VOICE ONE:

The South African doctor Christiaan Barnard did the first successful heart transplant. That happened in nineteen-sixty-seven.

Many more heart transplants have been done since nineteen-eighty-three. That was the year when the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine was approved for use in the United States. More than three-thousand heart transplants were performed around the world in two-thousand-three.

That same year, doctors also performed more than one-thousand lung transplants. Such operations can replace a single diseased lung or both lungs.

Sometimes, lung disease also damages the heart. So doctors must replace both the heart and the lungs.

Other organs that can be transplanted include the pancreas and the intestines⁵.

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VOICE TWO:

Doctors also perform tissue transplants. The most common is a blood transfusion⁶. Blood is considered a tissue. People may receive blood after an operation or accident. Other tissue transplants include skin, bone marrow⁷, blood vessels⁸ and corneas.

Corneal transplants improve the sight of people whose eyes have been damaged by injury or infection. Corneal transplants have a success rate of more than ninety percent.

Skin transplants reduce the chance of infection in areas of the body that have been burned. These transplants remain on the body for several weeks. This is done until skin from another part of the patient's own body can be used for a permanent transplant.

VOICE ONE:

Bone marrow transplants are for people who have disease such as leukemia, cancer of the blood. Doctors remove marrow from inside the hip⁹ bone of a healthy person. Then they place it into the sick person where the marrow begins to produce healthy blood cells.

Bones can be transplanted, too. Doctors have even transplanted hands and arms in several cases in Europe and the United States.

VOICE TWO:

A transplant operation succeeds only if doctors can prevent the body from rejecting the foreign organ or tissue. This is done with drugs like cyclosporine. Patients also must receive tissue that is similar to their own. The person who provides the organ or tissue is called the donor¹⁰. The one who receives it is the recipient¹¹.

Both the donor and recipient must have the same blood type. For some transplants, they also must have some of the same proteins called H.L.A antigens. These are found on the outside of cells. Each person has many different H.L.A. antigens. The donor and recipient must have several of the same antigens for the transplant to have a chance to succeed.

VOICE ONE:

Family members are often the best possible choice for donors¹² when a person needs a transplant. However, most transplanted organs come from people who have died or been declared brain dead. People who are brain dead usually suffered a head injury. After brain activity ends, doctors can keep the other organs alive with machines. This continues until transplant recipients¹³ are found.

In the United States, people who wish to donate their organs if they die in an accident can say so on their driving permit. Their families may also be asked for permission. A local medical organization will then do a computer search for people who need organs and have similar tissue.

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VOICE TWO:

Transplants do not always have to come from other humans. Animal organs have also been transplanted into people. In nineteen-sixty-three and sixty-four, doctors in the United States placed kidneys from chimpanzees into six people. All the people died from infections. But one patient survived for nine months.

Doctors began to perform such operations because of the lack of human organs. Those who continue the research say they believe there will never be enough human organs to meet the need.

VOICE ONE:

Many researchers say pigs are the best animals for transplants. Heart valves from pigs are being used to replace diseased or damaged heart valves in people.

And scientists continue research to find ways to use pig cells to treat several diseases. These include diabetes¹⁴, Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Doctors say animal tissue could also be useful in countries where human-to-human transplants are not permitted.

One risk of human-to-human transplants is the spread of viruses. But some medical experts have similar concerns about the possible dangers of transplants from animals. Medical organizations around the world have developed rules about animal transplants. And there are moral issues. In some nations, animal rights groups strongly protest transplants from animals to humans.

VOICE TWO:

In the United States, there is a national list of people who need transplants. An organization called the United Network for Organ Sharing is responsible for this list.

The organization says about eighty-four-thousand people in the United States are waiting for transplants. It says more than five-thousand people each year die before a donor is found. The government has a Web site for people to learn more about organ donation. The address is organdonor-dot-g-o-v.

Organ and tissue shortages are a worldwide problem. Not surprisingly, some people see a chance to profit. There are illegal sellers of body parts.

Public health officials call organ donation the gift of life. They urge more people to consider giving this gift should they die unexpectedly.

(THEME )

VOICE ONE:

SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written by Nancy Steinbach. Cynthia Kirk was our producer. This is Bob Doughty.

VOICE TWO:

And this is Faith Lapidus. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America.

1 doughty   

adj.勇猛的，坚强的

参考例句：

• Most of successful men have the characteristics of contumacy and doughty.绝大多数成功人士都有共同的特质：脾气倔强，性格刚强。
• The doughty old man battled his illness with fierce determination.坚强的老人用巨大毅力与疾病作斗争。

2 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

3 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

4 fungus   

n.真菌，真菌类植物

参考例句：

• Mushrooms are a type of fungus.蘑菇是一种真菌。
• This fungus can just be detected by the unaided eye.这种真菌只用肉眼就能检查出。

5 intestines   

n.肠( intestine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Perhaps the most serious problems occur in the stomach and intestines. 最严重的问题或许出现在胃和肠里。 来自辞典例句
• The traps of carnivorous plants function a little like the stomachs and small intestines of animals. 食肉植物的捕蝇器起着动物的胃和小肠的作用。 来自辞典例句

6 transfusion   

n.输血，输液

参考例句：

• She soon came to her senses after a blood transfusion.输血后不久她就苏醒了。
• The doctor kept him alive by a blood transfusion.医生靠输血使他仍然活着。

7 marrow   

n.骨髓；精华；活力

参考例句：

• It was so cold that he felt frozen to the marrow. 天气太冷了，他感到寒冷刺骨。
• He was tired to the marrow of his bones.他真是累得筋疲力尽了。

8 vessels   

n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人

参考例句：

• The river is navigable by vessels of up to 90 tons. 90 吨以下的船只可以从这条河通过。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• All modern vessels of any size are fitted with radar installations. 所有现代化船只都有雷达装置。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

9 hip   

n.臀部，髋；屋脊

参考例句：

• The thigh bone is connected to the hip bone.股骨连着髋骨。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line.新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

10 donor   

n.捐献者；赠送人；(组织、器官等的)供体

参考例句：

• In these cases,the recipient usually takes care of the donor afterwards.在这类情况下，接受捐献者以后通常会照顾捐赠者。
• The Doctor transplanted the donor's heart to Mike's chest cavity.医生将捐赠者的心脏移植进麦克的胸腔。

11 recipient   

a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器

参考例句：

• Please check that you have a valid email certificate for each recipient. 请检查是否对每个接收者都有有效的电子邮件证书。
• Colombia is the biggest U . S aid recipient in Latin America. 哥伦比亚是美国在拉丁美洲最大的援助对象。

12 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 recipients   

adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器

参考例句：

• The recipients of the prizes had their names printed in the paper. 获奖者的姓名登在报上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The recipients of prizes had their names printed in the paper. 获奖者名单登在报上。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

14 diabetes   

n.糖尿病

参考例句：

• In case of diabetes, physicians advise against the use of sugar.对于糖尿病患者，医生告诫他们不要吃糖。
• Diabetes is caused by a fault in the insulin production of the body.糖尿病是由体內胰岛素分泌失调引起的。