MatchingDonors.com — good or bad?

MatchingDonors.com is a website which facilitates donees and living organ donors to connect.  According to the site, it is “the most successful nonprofit organization that is improving those odds by finding living altruistic donors for patients needing transplants.”

However, this site has also generated controversy as reported in Tom Feeny, Organ donor website draws controversy, USA Today, April 21, 2009, from which the following excerpt is taken:

The website, which charges $600 per ad, is stirring controversy in Texas hospitals, where organ transplants are accepted only from friends or family. It is a federal offense to buy or sell organs, and the Texas hospitals fear under-the-table-payments and Internet scammers who prey on the ill * * *.

“Organ donation is a gift of life,” said Goran Klintmalm, chief of Baylor Regional Transplant Institute. “We don’t want to sully that gift by making it into a commodity.”

Website CEO Paul Dooley said people should be able to donate to anybody. But some physicians told the newspaper they foresee a website beauty contest where the healthiest and best-looking people are chosen for transplants