Would You Sell One of Your Kidneys?

The list for organ donors is long, and growing. In 1980 there was a one year wait for a cadaver; currently, the average wait time is almost 5 years, according to Dr Arthur Matis, a Minneapolis transplant surgeon. And this is in spite of the growing use of live organ donations.

It’s illegal to buy organs from living donors or to traffic in organs for profit, in the USA, Canada, and most other countries. But in some countries it’s legal (more or less), and so some patients with renal disease go overseas and get transplanted with a bought kidney. Dr Matis makes the provocative suggestion that a federal agency could be set up that compensates fairly for kidney procurement. It would have to be government-run, tightly regulated, and ensure not only reasonable financial compensation for the donor, but also provide life insurance and life-time medical care. The agency would ensure equitable distribution of organs, based on need, and not ability to pay.

Several surgeons at the World Transplant Congress, on hearing Dr Matis, said that, after initial skepticism, they were becoming more supportive of the idea, and that they would recommend some pilot studies. So one day you may be asked if you’d like to sell one of your kidneys. I think I’d probably wait until I was sure that the new government agency functioned more efficiently than many of the existing ones . . .

Comments

[jd]

yes i would sell my kidney,