Health Highlights: May 28, 2007

Mar. 23 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments,compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Game Show Features Kidney Donation

A terminally ill woman on a Dutch reality TV show will choose which of three contestants receives one of her kidneys, the Associated Press reported.

Those responsible for the "Big Donor Show" on the BNN network say they're trying to draw attention to the shortage of organ donors in the country. Critics say the show is tasteless and unethical.

The show will feature a 37-year-old woman with an inoperable brain tumor. She'll interview the three contestants, along with their families and friends. She'll then decide who gets one of her kidneys before she dies, the AP reported.

"We know that this program is super-controversial and some people will think it's tasteless, but we think the reality is even more shocking and tasteless: waiting for an organ is just like playing the lottery," Laurens Drillich, chairman of the BNN network, said in a prepared statement.

Drillich said patients on organ-transplant lists have to wait more than four years and 200 patients die each year due to a lack of donor organs.

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Bird Flu Survivors' Antibodies Protect Mice Against H5N1 Virus

Antibodies from human survivors of bird flu protected mice against the H5N1 virus, says a study in the open access journal PLoS Medicine. The research could lead to treatments for people infected with bird flu.

"We are very confident that this data can be reproduced in humans," study co-author Antonio Lanzavecchia, director of the immune regulation laboratory at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Switzerland, told Agence France-Presse.

Inoculation with antibodies generated from the blood of four people in Vietnam who survived bird flu provided mice with near total protection against the H5N1 strain of bird flu. The antibodies also proved highly effective in neutralizing H5N1 in mice already infected with the virus.

No untreated mice exposed to H5N1 survived, AFP reported.