Would you give a kidney to your mom? Dad? How about a brother or sister? Friend? Absolutely. How about a complete stranger? Hmm. Have to think about that one. While the majority of us would gladly donate a kidney to someone we love, far fewer of us are willing to do the same for someone we have never even met. Currently the only way to receive a kidney in the United States is through altruistic donation - meaning that someone voluntarily gives you a kidney and receives nothing in return. This is due to the National Organ Transplantation Act, which prohibits donating an organ in exchange for "valuable consideration." In the past few decades, the need for kidneys has far outpaced their supply. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are nearly 105,000 people waiting for organs in the United States. The majority of these patients are in need of kidneys and around 4,400 people died waiting for a kidney in 2007 alone. If patients are fortunate enough to receive a transplant, it will usually come only after they spend years on the waiting list. We are in dire need of kidney donors and there are different views on how to solve this crisis. Since the current policy is obviously not working, something must change. Why not compensate donors for their time as well as their life-saving gift? This would cause more people to consider organ donation.
There are many reasons that people do not donate kidneys to strangers. Any surgery involves risk. There are also costs associated with donation such as the time it takes to donate and make a full recovery. And after all of this, there is still a chance that the recipient will reject your kidney. While there might be the benefit of knowing that you saved someone's life, this does not outweigh the costs for most people to become donors. If it did, then there wouldn't be the shortage that there is today. If we changed the law to allow organ donors to be compensated, the incentive to donate would dramatically increase.
People argue that compensating organ donors is immoral, but isn't it also immoral to allow 13 people waiting for a kidney to die everyday? There are many ways to compensate donors if the public is still too averse to compensating people in cash. Tax credits or college scholarships could still provide incentive for people to donate kidneys. Also, providing families with an estate tax credit or help paying for a funeral would give families and individuals an incentive to donate or at least consider it.
Some suggest that compensating kidney donors would take advantage of the poor. This already happens today, in part because paying kidney donors is illegal in almost every country. People still donate a kidney in exchange for money, but because it is illegal it takes place in secret, often without proper medical care for the donor, leading to complications. As recently as this summer there was a string of arrests for an alleged organ smuggling ring. Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, along with others, is accused of trafficking organs internationally, sometimes selling them for as much as $160,000 while only paying the donors as little as $1,000. If this practice were legal, then this dangerous black market would become less of an issue. The system could be regulated to provide protections for donors. Donors would obviously have to be healthy enough to donate as well as be aware of the risks, so that they make an informed decision. As long as a person is freely making a well-informed, rational decision to save a life and better themselves at the same time, then who is anyone to tell them they can't do that?
So if the United States were to adopt a policy allowing donors to be compensated, how do we know it would even work? All things considered, it is unlikely that such a policy would have the opposite of the desired affect. More people, not less, would donate. Also, there is currently one country where it is legal to compensate organ donors. Never in a million years did I think that I would be envious of an aspect of Iran's health care system. Like all health care systems around the world, Iran's has its own problems. According to the Transplantation Unit at the Iran University of Medical Sciences, however, it happens to be the only country in the world without a waiting list for kidneys.
Megan Stiles's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.stiles@cavalierdaily.com.
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