Would You Give Your Kidney to a Stranger? Dallas Hospitals Don’t Want You To.
An Internet site helps people who need them find organ donors. But some hospitals hate the idea:
Hospitals in Dallas will not accept organ donations from people who aren’t friends or relatives. They fear under-the-table payments…..
[Meanwhile,]….. More than 84,000 people are on the kidney transplant list in the United States, and about 15 people a day die while waiting.
Absolutely amazing. How many people do you suppose have died because of this kind of bureaucratic thinking.
Under-the-table payments? Horrors. How about making the whole thing legal so there can be over-the-table payments in a real market?
Whose life is it anyway? Whose kidney is it? The hospital’s?
Have to say it makes me angry to think that Dallas hospitals think they should be able to dictate who can help whom in the realm of kidney failure.
As long as there is a good match, the role of the doctor and the hospital is to do the transplant. It is frankly none of their business what the relationship is between the donor and the recipient — whether it is kinship, altruism, or buyer and seller.
Any thoughts on how a surgeon verifies that a donor kidney was given/sold voluntarily with fully infomed consent?
Larry Niven’s organlegging stories come to mind. If you don’t like science fiction, consider what is reportedly going on now in Egypt (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2008874285_egyptorgansforsale.html) and China (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/147252.php).