'Seven Pounds' falls short of the facts

"Seven Pounds"

Columbia Pictures, released Dec. 19

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The premise

Tim Thomas (Will Smith) was the careless driver in a fatal car accident that led to the death of his fiancee and six others. Now extremely depressed and masquerading as his brother Ben, he plans to end his life and donate his organs (7 pounds' worth) and his home to seven worthy recipients. He gives his bone marrow, a kidney, a lobe of his liver and a lobe of his lung while still alive. He intends to donate his eyes to a blind pianist and his heart to a woman with congenital heart disease. But while waiting for the woman, Emily, to become sick enough to require a heart transplant, he gets to know her and falls in love. She eventually is moved up on the organ-transplant waiting list, but Tim is told that because of her rare blood type, she has only a 3% to 5% chance of receiving a compatible heart. Tim's blood type is compatible, and he conceives a plan in which he would die while in ice, thus preserving his heart.

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The medical questions

Do the organs and tissue donated amount to 7 pounds? Would an ethics board at a hospital allow someone to donate multiple organs while alive? Could a smoker be saved from lung cancer with a transplant? Are bone marrow transplants so easily done or are they carefully screened for compatibility? Could Tim's eyes (corneas) be donated to a person of his choice? What are the chances of his heart being compatible with someone with a rare blood type?

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The reality

The organs transplanted don't quite add up to 7 pounds. "A lobe of the liver is about 2 pounds, but the kidney and a lobe of the lung are only a quarter-pound each, and the heart is only a pound," says Dr. Lloyd Ratner, director of renal and pancreatic transplantation at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Most living donors don't donate more than one organ, in part because of the physical toll on the body, he says. Further, all donors are screened for depression, and no ethics board at a hospital would allow a person in Tim's mental state to donate any organ, much less more than one.

Lung cancer: About 1,000 people in the U.S. receive a lung transplant every year (25% of those who are waiting for a lung). But lung transplantation is generally not recommended as a treatment for lung cancer, according to the American College of Chest Physicians. The chance of recurrence or metastasis is high in these patients. Further, "one needs two donors donating one lobe each for living donor lung transplantation," says Dr. Selim Arcasoy, medical director of the lung transplantation program at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.