For many people Facebook is a way to share your life via digital communication, but now you may be able to share your life more literally.  A new Facebook tool unveiled by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the Good Morning America has “the power to save lives”  by letting users donate organs.

The company has revealed that they will allow users to state on their Timeline that they are registered to donate their organs after death. You will be able to reveal which state you have registered in, the date that you registered, and also explain why you decided to become a donor. And those of you who haven’t registered as a donor will be able to do so via the links added by Facebook.

According to Facebook, “With the addition of “organ donor” to the Life Events section of timeline, you can state your intention to become an organ donor, and share your story about when, where or why you decided to become a donor. If you are not officially registered as an organ donor, sign up with the appropriate registry”.

This is certainly an interesting move by Facebook, and it is also probably not what most people had in mind about what was coming. And of course patients have been using the social networking site to find donors for some time now, but the new feature will most likely become popular quickly and dramatically increase the number of registrations.

Facebook says that the new feature will only be available in some countries at first, like the US and UK, but will be rolled out to other areas around the world later on.

Check out the video to know more about the new tool.

[Source]

The post Facebook Going To Save Lives By Letting You Donate Organs (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Around 570,000 people suffer from chronic kidney failure in the US alone and there were only 16,812 kidneys available for transplant last year. The rest of the patients were on a waiting list, which is certainly a death sentence for many. But in the future, mechanical kidneys might save the lives of those who are anxiously waiting for a real organ.

An artificial kidney has been in the works at UCSF and nine other labs for years, and the project has been selected for FDA’s Innovation Pathway this month. If it’s a success, artificial kidneys, which hopefully will be affordable, will allow patients to live without dialysis and also without immune suppressing drugs that are used to make sure that the body does not reject transplanted kidneys.

The artificial kidney will perform the water-balancing and metabolic functions just like a real kidney via lab-grown cells and there will be nanofilters for removing blood toxins. And there won’t be any need for pumps or external power as the body’s blood pressure is enough to get the job done.

But the machine won’t be that perfect. For example, it can’t produce a kidney chemical called erythropoietin. But there is a drug for that, and also artificial kidneys can last indefinitely, the only requirement is that new cells may have to be implanted every 2 years. The average lifespan of a real transplanted kidney is 10 to 12 years.

But the mechanical one may not put an end to the transplant waiting list anytime soon, although it will surely be a blessing for many who are suffering. A clinical trial is expected to begin in 2016.

The post Artificial Kidney Made With Real Cells (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This is how the story goes. Young freshman “Zheng” – his nickname or last name, we’re not sure – contacted a kidney-selling agent online, they offered about $3,000 USD (20,000 yuan) to him for his kidney. The operation was then carried out at some less than moral hospital in Chenzhou. Of course the hospital is denying any such operation, and is reportedly claiming that their “urology department is contracted to a businessman in Fujian.”

This story got blown open when the young Zheng came home with his iPad 2 and other electronics gadgets, laptop, iPhone and whatever else the poor one-kidney teen could carry. His mother became suspicious, so Zheng obviously fessed up. Shanghai Daily quoted Zheng as saying: “I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.”

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