Kidney Transplant | featured news

In 1954, Murray successfully transplanted a healthy kidney from a man and implanted it in his identical twin. He was awarded the 1990 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine.

It turns out you can recycle just about anything these days - even kidneys and other organs donated for transplants. Recently in Chicago, in what is believed to be the first documented case of its kind in the U.S., a transplanted kidney that was failing was removed from a patient while he was still alive and given to somebody else.

A New York man pleaded guilty Thursday to what experts said was the first ever proven case of black-market organ trafficking in the United States. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum admitted in federal court in Trenton that he had brokered three illegal kidney transplants from people in Israel for U.S.-based customers in exchange for payments of $120,000 or more. He also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to broker an illegal kidney sale.

His mother's suspicions were aroused when her son returned home with an iPad 2 and an iPhone, and Zheng, who was left with a deep red scar from the surgery, was forced to admit what he did. She took him back to Chenzhou to report the crime, but the contact numbers the kidney agents gave Zheng were not working.

"30 Rock" star Tracy Morgan is recovering from a kidney transplant. A statement released Monday by Morgan's publicist says Morgan is doing well and taking "much-needed time" to recover from the surgery earlier this month.

A two-year international inquiry has concluded that the prime minister of Kosovo led a clan of criminal entrepreneurs who presided over an organ-trafficking network that extracted kidneys from Serbian prisoners executed during the Kosovo conflict in 1999.

Politicians long ago discovered the uses of Facebook. East Haven Mayor April Capone Almon found something else there: a constituent who needed her kidney.

Renee Patterson's most precious present this Christmas won't be under her tree, and it didn't come from a store. This holiday, she says, she got her life back.