Speaking Truth to Transplant
It's likely that of the over 100,000 people currently on the transplant waiting list, more than 7000 people will die this year.
Many of those will have lingered unnecessarily on dialysis for many years because those in charge of the current organ procurement system insist on keeping their heads firmly planted in the sand and continually refuse to pursue the only method guaranteed to produce life-saving living donors - incentives.
While acknowledging that boosting the number of living organ donors is the only way to reduce the obscene backlog of patients waiting for life-saving transplants, the National Kidney Foundation and the national network of Organ Procurement Organizations continue to pursue largely ineffective organ donation programs while willfully ignoring and actively obstructing any efforts to introduce - or even test - incentives to attract living organ donors.
NEW: When Altruism Isn't Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors
Edited by Sally Satel, M.D. (and transplant recipient)
When Altruism Isn't Enough argues that compensating people who donate an organ to a desperate stranger-an extraordinary act of live-saving value-will motivate others to do the same, increase the national supply of kidneys, and reduce needless death and suffering.
It is the first book to describe in detail how a government-regulated, compensation-based system for living donors could be designed. Contributors to the volume-physicians, legal scholars, economists, and philosophers-set the stage for reform of NOTA by showing how compensating donors would be ethically permissible, economically justifiable, and pragmatically achievable.