Living Donors Are People Too

Subtitle: Or it isn’t, but they say it anyway…   Recently, Google Alerts dropped the University of Wisconsin Medical Center’s “10 Reasons Why You Should Be a Living Kidney Donor” in my lap (or inbox). The exaggerations and misleading statements on the page are worthy of multiple blog posts, but right now I want to …

A2ALL is a National Institute of Health funded study of adult-to-adult live liver donors collecting data from nine liver transplant programs in the US. Participation in the study is voluntary, and according to OPTN’s webpage (which may be out-of-date, not my fault), there are currently 74 transplant centers in the US that perform living liver …

The Swiss are the only country to have a true living donor registry*. Launched for kidney donors in April 1993, it provides physicals annually then biannually  for the length of kidney donor’s life. And no, the living donor does not pay for the exams. Recently, a German living kidney donor (and more importantly, advocate and …

Iran currently is the only country where the buying and selling of kidneys is legal. Pro-market advocates (who generally know nothing about the reality of living kidney donation) and those whose main concern is increasing kidneys for would-be recipients (usually those who benefit from such an arrangement: surgeons, recipients themselves, etc) praise Iran for their …

Contrary to popular media perception, not all living kidney or liver donors skip merrily off into the sunset. Some end up dead, maimed or emotionally damaged. The question then becomes: what does a living donor who believes s/he has been mistreated, coerced, manipulated, lied to, betrayed or abandoned do? Obviously, one can consult a lawyer, …

I’m no stranger to hate mail, or even a public skirmish. So far, I haven’t published anyone’s email to me, mostly because I generally respect folks’ rights to disagree, and secondly, because there’s nothing I say on this blog that I wouldn’t say to an individual directly (Most of the time when people publish emails on blogs, …

An article popped up on my google alerts recently regarding an Indian (dot, not feathers as Robin Williams’ character would say in “Good Will Hunting”) who answered a solicitation for a kidney, sold said kidney and has now been screwed and abandoned by his recipient/buyer. A couple of days later, another article appeared, this one …

Earlier this year, OPTN put three different living donor related proposals up for public comment. One, about living donor follow-up, is still being haggled over, and therefore the subject of an August ACOT presentation. While the majority of the talk revolves around living kidney and liver donors who donated in the US between July 1, …

Yes, I am an info junkie. Fortunately, I have friends who are also info junkies so we swap links and articles (believe me, this is a much better ‘ring’ than some out there on the ‘net). Recently I was sent “Please UNOS, Transplantation is a Fragile Public Trust” by Dr. George W. Rutecki. He highlights …

Not long before Christmas I was alerted to yet another Sally Satel’s one-sided editorials about paying living donors for their organs. This time she was utilizing a conversation she had with writer Mark Cohen regarding the effects the recession was having on people’s theoretical willingness to ‘sell’ an organ. I haven’t blogged about Ms. Satel, …