In "Phage", why not just take a lung from the alien who took them?

Question

In the Star Trek: Voyager episode Phage, a Vidiian steals Neelix's lungs to replace his own which have been affected by disease.

Janeway is not willing to simply take back the lungs by force as she doesn't feel right killing one creature to save another.

By the end of the episode, it's determined that while none of the crew have lungs that are compatible with Neelix, the Vidiians have advanced medical technology which will allow one of them to be transplanted anyway.

Now comes the moment of having to choose a donor, someone to give up a lung so that Neelix can live, and Kes heroically steps up.

Why did they not just take a lung back from the one who stole them in the first place? He even seemed genuinely concerned for Neelix and so would not have objected himself, it would have presumably been the best possible match (being Neelix's own lung), it would have gotten Janeway out of her strange moral quandary and it wouldn't have discommoded one of her crew!

Valorum · Accepted Answer

This was addressed in the show. In addition to Neelix's lungs being grafted into the Vidiian's body, they'd also been altered in such a way as to make their return impossible, presumably by removing certain factors that would result in their rejection.

JANEWAY: I have a great sympathy for what your race has endured, but I cannot allow you to keep the organs you removed from one of our
crew members. We need them back immediately.
DERETH: I'm afraid that isn't possible. I have already bio-chemically altered the air-breathing organs and grafted them
into Motura's body. They are a part of him now.
Voy: Phage

Machavity · Answer

The simple answer is the lungs were now infected with the Phage (it was a plot point that they couldn't cure it, or they'd just remove their own organs, disinfect them, and put them back). Even if they could have been removed and grafted back, you wouldn't want unhealthy tissue returned to your body.

Relevant dialogue from the episode

DERETH: We are gathering replacement organs and suitable bio-matter. It is the only way we have to fight the phage.
  JANEWAY: A virus? Some kind of disease?
  MOTURA: Yes, it attacked our people over two millennia ago. It consumes our bodies, destroys our genetic codes and cellular structures.
  JANEWAY: So you harvest the bodies of other beings to replace your own tissues as they're consumed by this phage?
  MOTURA: Our immuno-technology cannot keep up. The phage adapts. It resists all attempts to destroy it. Our society has been ravaged. Thousands die each day. There is no other way for us to survive.

geewhiz · Answer

Motura needed both lungs.

Memory Alpha says the Vidiians were

forcibly removing organs from live subjects as necessary

The part that strikes me is "as necessary." This implies that they only took what they had to as opposed to keeping organs on hand or transplanting organs they didn't need.

In this case, they took Neelix's lungs. Presumably, a phage-free heart would be useful but they left his heart intact.

In addition, some members of Vidiian society seemed unwilling to harvest organs. Motura himself was willing to die if it could save Neelix's life and Danara Pel seemed to be against the practice. Later, the Think Tank said Janeway wouldn't recognize the Vidiians without the phage even though Janeway had seen a healthy Vidiian in holgraphic form (Pel). That implies, their entire culture shifted away from harvesting when it was no longer needed.

So, the simplest answer is that Motura needed both lungs to survive. The Voyager crew was unwilling to risk or sacrifice him to save Neelix.

In "Phage", why not just take a lung from the alien who took them?

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