Rosa's Story
Rachel Nankivell and Peter Zwart
Issue 6, April 2002
Our daughter, Rosa, was born on 19 September 2000. She was small but strong, with red hair and blue eyes. For twelve hours we cradled and rejoiced in our new, healthy, beautiful baby. But this was not to last. To our shock and initial grief, later that day Rosa was diagnosed with Down syndrome and our neatly imagined future disintegrated. We took Rosa home to the security of loving family.
Medicalising Normal Human Experience: The Example of Hormone Replacement Therapy
Sharron Cole
Issue 8, November 2002
The human condition is a mass of contrasting states – wellness and sickness, youth and old age, vigour and increasing frailty, obesity and thinness, baldness and hairiness – the list could go on interminably. Many of the processes cannot be controlled – they are simply a part of what it means to be human. Others, for example excessive weight gain or high blood pressure, can be helped by lifestyle changes such as improved nutrition and increased exercise.
Editorial: Organ donation - An Enduring Gift
Michael McCabe
Issue 12, April 2004
Christopher had been crossing the road on a drizzly wet Wellington day when he was hit by two cars. He
suffered multiple injuries and was placed on life support in Intensive Care.
While it was well known that 16-year old Christopher had no love affair with schooling it soon became clear that he was much loved by his family and friends, judging by the numbers in the waiting room at Intensive Care. After a week on life-support and after a diagnosis of brain-death the decision was made to withdraw ventilation and allow him to die. The night before this happened the attending-physician asked Christopher's mother and sister if they would allow his kidneys and corneas to be donated for transplant. The family agreed and the following day Christopher's two kidneys and two corneas were transplanted into four patients at Wellington Hospital.
My Experience of Renal Failure and its Treatment
Brian Quin, SM
Issue 12, April 2004
Tuesday, 9 June 1992 was a very important date in my life story. On that day, at Wellington Hospital, my brother Alan gave me one of his kidneys.
Letter from a Kidney Donor
Alan Quin
Issue 12, April 2004
Dear Reader,
The opportunity to share vital life enhancing body parts by way of a mutual organ transplant operation is a privilege relatively few New Zealanders will ever experience. Although the benefits are heightened for the live donor, the possibility of organ donation is also uplifting for the prospective giver. These benefits are psycho/spiritual: the act of giving instils a state of 'structural' equanimity and joy within the donor and tends to inwardly affirm life's essential paradox that our deeper potential is sacrificial.
Stem Cell Research in New Zealand
John Kleinsman
Issue 12, April 2004
A great deal of promise and excitement surrounds the new possibilities for health care heralded by increasing knowledge into the development of human cells. In New Zealand, Parliament is presently considering legislation on human assisted reproductive technology (HART Bill) that will impact directly on the sort of research able to be undertaken in this country.
Making a Life-Saving Difference: Organ Donation and Consent
John Kleinsman
Issue 13, August 2004
As reported in the last issue of The Nathaniel Report (number 12, April 2004) New Zealand has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the world. Since then the Ministry of Health has initiated a review of the regulation of human tissue and tissue-based therapies, including the practices surrounding organ transplantation. Two key questions have emerged in the debate around organ donation: What sort of consent is required? Should an individual's wishes always be followed?
Developments in Embryo Research
Anne Dickinson
In the last few years while New Zealanders have been debating cloning and assisted human reproduction and the government has been legislating to deal with these issues, human embryo research has moved in new directions in other countries.
Such research takes many forms. For example, in the USA scientists have created human embryos which were part male and part female, by implanting cells from male embryos into female embryos. The hybrid embryos developed normally in some cases, with intermixed male and female cells, and abnormally in others. The embryos were destroyed after six days of development.