Anatomical Gift Incentives Urged

Here is an excerpt from Editorial, Ease the market for organ donors, RockyMountainNews. com, Sept. 3, 2006:

About 90,000 Americans now wait for transplants, with 70 percent of those patients seeking a healthy kidney from a donor, dead or alive.

Roughly 60 percent of those on the waiting list at any given time will die before finding a matching donor.

The demand for healthy organs is growing faster than the supply. * * *

The medical establishment has long considered it anathema to allow donors or their survivors to “profit” from their beneficence. The worry is that poor people will sell their organs out of financial desperation and thus in some cases compromise their health. But there are ways to minimize the risk that such a fully open market might pose.

For example, Washington could alleviate the shortage by considering pilot programs. One idea is federal income tax relief along the lines of laws operating in eight states, including Utah. Those states offer up to $10,000 in income-tax deductions to repay donors’ travel expenses and lost wages.

Another possibility: “futures” contracts, in which recipients would pay up front some of the funeral expenses of those who elect to donate organs at death.

And the medical establishment should drop its objections to organizations like MatchingDonors.com. This site lets organ recipients find willing live donors and make transplantation arrangements privately.

We’re certainly not comfortable endorsing a full-fledged market in organs, a regime that would allow donors to auction kidneys on eBay. But the current system is not compassionate; it amounts to a death sentence for thousands of Americans each year.

Ethicists and medical professionals need to acknowledge that fact and consider life-affirming alternatives.