Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
'I Want My Kidney Back' Says Doc
A man who donated his kidney to his wife eight years ago now wants it back after she cheated on him and filed for divorce.
Richard Batista from Long Island in New York, US, says he wants the organ back or £2.1m ($1.5m).
The surgeon gave his wife Dawnell the kidney in 2001 after two previous failed transplants.
Dr Batista told the New York Daily News there is "no value you can put on an organ when it saves someone's life. There is no greater feeling on this planet."
He says he is only suing Dawnell to get her to act reasonably in the divorce case, claiming she is restricting access to their children, aged eight, 11 and 14.
Their relationship had been suffering due to the strain of his wife's medical issues, said Dr Batista.
"My first priority was to save her life," he said. "The second bonus was to turn the marriage around."
But it did not work and four years later she filed for divorce.
Arthur Caplan from the University of Pennsylvania's Centre for Bioethics said the likelihood of Dr Batista getting either his kidney or the money was "somewhere between impossible and completely impossible".
Medical ethicist Robert Veatch from Georgetown University said it was illegal for an organ to be exchanged for anything of value.
Organ donation is a gift which means you cannot legally get it back, he explained.
"It's her kidney now and taking the kidney out would mean she would have to go on dialysis or it would kill her," Mr Veatch said.
He insisted no reputable surgeon would perform such a procedure and no court could compel someone to undergo an operation.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Year End World Photos 2008
In this April 8, 2008 file photo, mother Sushma holds her daughter Lali at their residence in Saini Sunpura, 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of New Delhi, India. The baby with two faces, two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes was born on March 11 in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said
In this March 28, 2008 file photo, Zimbabwean people flee across border at Beitbridge Border Post in Musina, South Africa.
In this March 20, 2008 file photo, an Anjouan woman, her face covered with an earth based mixture to protect her from the sun, walks through the Medina near the main port of Anjouan, Comoros.
In this Nov. 2, 2008 file photo, thousands of displaced people walk along a road heading north of Goma, in a bid to return to their homes near Kibumba, some 40 kilometers north of Goma in eastern Congo
In this July 17, 2008 file photo, Pakistani girls pause from reciting verses of the Quran or holy book next to Islamabad's radical Lal Masjid or Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan
In this April 5, 2008 file photo, Police officers rescue a man from a river overflowed by heavy rains in Cajamarca, Peru
In this Feb. 19, 2008 file photo, an election worker takes a break next to sealed bags containing ballots at the civil court in Lahore, Pakistan
In this Jan. 3, 2008 file photo, Palestinian relatives of five members of the Fayyad family killed by an Israeli tank shell react during their funeral at Khan Younis.
In this Sept. 12, 2008 file photo, a Palestinian woman is seen on her way to pray for the holy fasting month of Ramadan at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City
in this May 6, 2008 file photo, relatives of Ahmed Urwa who was killed by a sniper in Baghdad's neighborhood of Shula, grieve during his funeral in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, Iraq
In this April 12, 2008 file photo taken with a video camera, U.S. military personnel work giving medical aid to a child who was wounded in a bombing in Mosul, Iraq
In this Feb. 11, 2008 file photo, relatives prepare to light the funeral pyre of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Allahabad, India. Thousands of followers chanted Vedic hymns as the body of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru celebrated for bringing meditation to the West, was cremated at a site overlooking the confluence of the sacred Ganges and Yamuna rivers in this north Indian city.
In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, motherless orphans and lost children rest at the Don Bosco Ngangi center in Goma, eastern Congo
In this May 10, 2008 file photo, an ambulance arrives at the site of a shooting, as people try to help the injured in Beirut, Lebanon.
In this Feb. 21, 2008 file photo, the U.S. embassy in Belgrade burns after masked attackers broke into the building and set an office on fire at the end of a massive protest against Western-backed Kosovo independence, in the Serbian capital.
In this July 7, 2008 file photo, an Afghan policeman walks among the dead and wounded bodies at the site of a suicide attack near the Indian Embassy in central Kabul, Afghanistan
In this Sept. 4, 2008 file photo, a man carries an elderly woman on his back as he walks through a muddy street left behind by Tropical Storm Hanna in Gonaives, Haiti.
In this Nov. 18, 2008 file photo, displaced people gather around the coffin containing the body of Rebecca Yalala, who died the day before of complications from diabetes and malaria, as they prepare to bury her in a grove of banana trees near a camp for displaced people in Bulengo near Goma in eastern Congo.
In this Nov. 2, 2008 file photo, Pakistani Sunni Muslims devotees return back to their homes on a packed train after attending annual religious congregation in Multan, Pakistan
In this July 24, 2008 file photo, South Korean elementary school students shout the word 'mother' as they lay in the water during an exercise at a marine boot camp for students on Daebu Island, in Ansan,South Korea. Some 70 students took part in the three-day camp as a way to mentally and physically strengthen themselves.
In this June 25, 2008 file photo, a female police officer aims with her pistol in a shooting range, during a graduation ceremony in Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq. Some 115 police woman graduated from Karbala's police academy
In this June 3, 2008 file photo, Former Mayor of Madrid Alvarez del Manzano, first row, second left, shows his emotions as a bull jumps over the barrier during a San Isidro bullfight in Madrid