Newzity

Yes you can. All four recipients of the organs from a teenager, who was misdiagnosed before his death, got cancer. Two of them died and other two are receiving cancer treatment.

Fifteen year old Alex Koehne was seriously ill and suffering from nausea, severe pain, seizures, and double vision. At Stony Brook Hospital he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and given antibiotics. Sadly, he died last March, and his parents did not hesitate to donate his organs. Organs from such young patients are rare and considered perfect. However, a month later an autopsy found that he died from a rare blood cancer. But it was too late. All four of the patients who got the organs were already infected: a 56 year old man who got his liver died in four months, and a 36 year woman who got his pancreas died a few months later. The two people who got his kidneys are undergoing chemotherapy. The state Health Department “did not find flaws in policies, procedures and actions at Stony Brook.” The Donor Network involved in the transplant expressed sympathy but pointed out that transplant saved 22 thousand lives last year and more than six thousand died without getting one.

Those may be solid statistics but are not comforting for the patients worried about transplant safety.