I think the fault of the NIH or whatever in this case, was choosing the lungs or any organ from a heavy smoker. They did perform tests to check the health of the lungs. That being said, I wonder if the family would have still taken the chance or would they have waited?
I wonder if anti-rejection drugs have been shown to accelerate cancer in other cases.
Yeah, it seems like a poor decision. They did test the lungs, but clearly its not a foolproof test. Reading the article, he had been told in 2006 he had about two years to live. The transplant was in April 2007. He probably had some time, but it wasn't much. Damn, I don't know what I would have done had I known about the lungs. The problem with a lot of this is that we have to trust the doctor. They went to years of training and have to explain the situation to us in like ten minutes.
Anti-rejection drugs are usually immuno-suppressant, right? My cancer knowledge is extremely vague, but I thought radiotherapy broke apart the DNA of the cancer cell or something to prevent it from dividing. I don't know how the immune system plays into all of that.