Women giving their body parts to men-kidneys

[1Endeavour2]

Women donate more kidneys than men. Men receive more kidneys than women. Surprise me!

Is there a medical reason / basis to this? Are men more likely to suffer kidney disease / failure? Are we talking about live donors or after death? It needs a lot more context than provided.

Recipients are prioritised by clinical need and quality of match, and that's how it should be.

Living donors are usually found from direct family members, and again it is best quality of match from those tested which will be prioritised. That's not based on sex. Altruistic donation is pretty rare.

Getting more people (regardless of sex) to tell their relatives that they want their organs used is of course a good thing, even with an opt-out system.

Are men more likely to suffer kidney disease / failure?

More women have kidney disease, but men who get it tend to have more serious disease and are more likely to reach kidney failure. So yes, there are clinical reasons why men are more likely to be on the transplant list

‘ Recipients are prioritised by clinical need and quality of match, and that's how it should be’

Decisions, including by clinicians in healthcare, are not made in a vacuum!

@Ethelswith

Recipients are prioritised by clinical need and quality of match, and that's how it should be.

Living donors are usually found from direct family members, and again it is best quality of match from those tested which will be prioritised. That's not based on sex. Altruistic donation is pretty rare.

Getting more people (regardless of sex) to tell their relatives that they want their organs used is of course a good thing, even with an opt-out system.

Who else thinks all else being equal, that a doctor will ask a female relative before a male one?

This is only an issue if there is a trend across all donations - with the relatively small number of donated organs and the number of organs that can be donated, it's statistically likely that one organ (at least) will have a marked difference in male-female or female-male, just down to chance.

Interesting, I thought that donation of an organ to a man from a woman who had ever had a child was sub-optimal?
Disclaimer- I’m not a medic.

what's the point of this post exactly?

That womens socilasation extends to giving up actual parts of their bodies to men, and yet we are still despised.

Doctors don't ask any family members to be donors - potential donors must approach the transplant service independently to undergo initial compatibility tests.

Not saying that there isn't some truth to women being more likely to choose to donate or external pressure being applied by family members, but it is unrelated to healthcare bias.

I read about this years ago when researching the family pressures put on women in India to become surrogates. Doctors may be making clinical decisions but when it comes to families making their decisions, then sexism and coercion comes into play. Men are seen as more valuable, more deserving and as the family breadwinner. Women are seen as expendable, the service human beings, and are judged more harshly for not being self-sacrificing. (#BeKind being enforced on females far more than males.) In large extended families finances may be a factor. It's illegal to sell kidneys, but there's nothing to stop a richer relative paying off a poorer one, or for the family benefactor's life to be seen as more essential than some other lowly relative.

I observe that only women are/will be asked to be surrogates, donate uteruses if the time comes.
Many modern armies in the world have 'augmented' soldiers. Who is going to 'augment' them. Just my reflection on women's place in the scheme of things. I have been rethinking surrogacy lately. Now think it is open to massive misuse especially for disadvantaged women.

I'm unclear on your last post "only women are asked to be surogates or donate uterus" ... surely by the biological makeup of the humans, only women can???
Or am I missing something obvious?

Absolutely unsurprised.

Similarly, for every 100 women who donate blood, only 70 men donate blood. This persists even though more women have conditions that mean they can't donate, and it's not about work and availability - at my workplace we got free time off to donate, with a mobile donation unit around the corner, and still more women stepped up.

It's not about healthcare providers as it isn't doctors soliciting donations - it's about the cultural expectations and environment that means that far more female than male relatives will step up to be tested.

There are also statistics that show a man is far more likely to initiate a divorce if his wife is diagnosed with cancer than vice versa. In relationships and families women are often seen as staff members more than human beings.

Just because there is some disparity in a statistic about men and women does not mean there is some kind of anti-woman thing going on. That's the worst kind of cheap, lazy, gotcha bs.

This doesn't surprise me. There was a poster on MN who was under severe pressure to donate a kidney to her Father / FIL.

I think it's to do with more women being prepared to do it.

Impact of the donor-recipient gender matching on the graft survival from live donors

Interesting:

Results
The most successful transplant based on donor-recipient gender was observed in male donor to male recipient, and then male donor to female recipient. In female transplant recipients, level of serum cratinine and eGFR, positive dialysis history before transplant, and low donor hemoglobin level can be considered as good prognostic factors recommended for kidney transplant survival.

Conclusions
Our results suggested gender matching for kidney transplant. Only in some exceptional conditions, male donor to female recipient kidney transplant may be successful and female donors to male recipients are not suggested, especially in aged patients with the history of dialysis.

@LobsterNapkin

Just because there is some disparity in a statistic about men and women does not mean there is some kind of anti-woman thing going on. That's the worst kind of cheap, lazy, gotcha bs.

Exactly. Very lazy and easily disproved. Because it is also true that white people are more likely to be blood and organ donors than nonwhite people. Yet we’d never argue this is due to some kind of anti-white thing going on in the medical establishment.

@SummerHouse

I think it's to do with more women being prepared to do it.

Gosh, it's almost like there is a feminism board so that women can reflect on WHY women are more likely to be prepared to give things up to men. Have another try, Summerhouse, you can do it if you really try.

@LobsterNapkin

Just because there is some disparity in a statistic about men and women does not mean there is some kind of anti-woman thing going on. That's the worst kind of cheap, lazy, gotcha bs.

No, but when there is a consistent trend in women (Vs men) stepping up to donate parts of their own body, then it's an absolutely reasonable thing to flag and question.

Poster after poster have noted that this is not going to be a healthcare 'anti-woman thing'. However it absolutely looks to be driven by greater cultural expectations of women - or to flip it, our lower expectations of men to take personal health risk or discomfort for the health benefits of others.

However it absolutely looks to be driven by greater cultural expectations of women - or to flip it, our lower expectations of men to take personal health risk or discomfort for the health benefits of others.

This is pure speculation.

However, the following is fact. Up until next year, gay and bisexual men were barred from blood and organ donation if they’d had sex within past three months. The same doesn’t apply to lesbian and bisexual women. So the donation pool of men is therefore smaller than the donation pool of women. So you cannot expect blood/organ donation to be 50/50 from each sex.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/uk-eases-restrictions-on-blood-donations-from-gay-and-bisexual-men/ar-BB1bVct4

Poster after poster have noted that this is not going to be a healthcare 'anti-woman thing'. However it absolutely looks to be driven by greater cultural expectations of women - or to flip it, our lower expectations of men to take personal health risk or discomfort for the health benefits of others.

It could be, and as far as I know women are more likely to donate in general, but no one has really stepped up to examine what is behind it all. There could be any number of reasons, both medical and social. Things like who works, and where, etc. Who is in a position to take time off work. Etc. The fact that men receive more kidney's is almost certainly going to be medically based and very possibly linked to the fact that women give more, too.

This is the kind of thing it's difficult to discuss usefully without more comparative data. There are just too many variables involved.