According to BusinessWeek in "Meet Your Organ Match Online," about 88,000 people in the U. S. are waiting for living organs and expecting a transplant. But more than 60,000 patients will die before a liver or a kidney becomes available. Enter MatchingDonors.com, a non-profit corporation run by volunteers who take no salaries. If you're a potential donor, you tell them that you're ready to give an organ (not sell, it's illegal!). If you're a patient, you register for $295 per month -- 100% of the money paid for patient memberships is applied to running the site. Then you have access to the full list of potential donors -- 1,943 today -- and you look for what you need. Read more.
Let's first look at the current situation as summarized by BusinessWeek.
The vast majority of organ transplants, from donors both living and dead, are managed by the federally sponsored United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS allocates organs according to medical urgency, time spent on the waiting list, and the proximity of the patient to the available organ.
But there aren't nearly enough available organs. There are currently some 88,000 people in need of an organ listed with UNOS, and the network says that only 4,373 transplants were performed in the U. between January and May 6 of this year. It's estimated that 17 people die every day while waiting for transplants.
MatchingDonors.com wants to improve this situation by matching patients and potential donors. How does this process work?
The scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Once a patient and potential donor find each other, the patient's transplant coordinator schedules both a medical and psychiatric evaluation of the person seeking to give up a piece of his or her body. "We met with some resistance from some hospitals at the beginning but not so much any more," says MatchingDonors founder and medical director Dr. Jeremiah Lowney. "After all, we're doing a good thing here."
BusinessWeek adds that only seven patients received transplants since last October. But this matching service is still very young.
And not everyone in the medical world likes this idea of searching for an organ on the Web and some hospitals and medical schools have ethical concerns.
To explore the issue, Harvard Medical School is set to hold a public forum on May 12 titled "Soliciting organs over the Internet," bringing together Lowney with several medical ethicists and transplant surgeons. But given the very poor odds of finding an organ donor the traditional way, ethical concerns may hold little sway with desperate patients.
I don't know about you, but I think that MatchingDonors.com has an excellent idea. Please tell me if you agree or not.
The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Sources: Catherine Arnst, BusinessWeek Online, May 12, 2005; and various websites
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Internet
Medicine
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