Asking For Your Organ Back

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you donate an organ, can you get it back? The court has faced that issue more than once, if you can believe it.

A Long Island woman filed a claim last month asking for the kidney she donated so that her boss could move up on the donor list after the boss fired her shortly after she donated the kidney. Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?

This case comes two years after a man in New York who gave his now-ex-wife one of his kidneys asked for it back in the divorce settlement when he found out she'd cheated on him.

And you can kind of understand why both of those donors would want to take their kidneys back, with a rusty spoon. But that's not going to happen.

We all have one vital organ per person for the most part which we can't donate until after we've passed, but people have two kidneys and can survive with only one. So when a live donor gives an organ, he or she undergoes extensive mental and physical tests to ensure that the donor understands the process, is doing it voluntarily, is up to the task, and has signed all of the appropriate legal releases including the one saying you understand there are no take-backs.

In both cases, the bad press their recipients have gotten may be what they really wanted anyway.