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University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, September 24, 1991
Insufficient number of donors prompts controversy about selling organs
The Associated Press
DETROIT — Every day, five to seven people die waiting for organ transplants. 30 minutes, the national transplant waiting list grows by one more patient.
Every year, only about 4,000 donors are used
almost all of the 15,000 whole-organ transplants.
"In India, they sell organs. Of course, that's illegal here," said Elenora Forlenza, administrator of the Transplant and Health Policy Center at the University of Michigan in Am Arbire
About 300 international medical, legal, ethical and philosophical experts gathered yesterday in Dearborn, Mich. for a two-day seminar
they also planned to discuss whether people should be allowed to sell their organs and whether such agreements could be carried out without family permission.
at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. They debated whether the donor death could be solved by paying people while they were alive for donations promised at death.
"There's a squeamishness about letting people sell a kidney for monetary gain. Shouldn't people have this choice? What's the objection to using a fairly common American strategy?" said James Blumstein, a law professor at Vanderbilt University.
said Blumstein, who will debate organ commerce today. "The demand exists. Let's have a five-year trial in a few states and see what happens."
"There's a tremendous need for organs,"
But there are serious questions about allowing a free market for human livers or kidneys, he added. Poor people and the Third World could end up being used as organ farms for the wealthy, or people could risk their health by selling a kidney. Blumstein said it also would open the possibility of preferential treatment for the rich.
One way to up donations might be to give people stipends, such as paying $30 or $100 per day. For some groups, the money is not enough.
"If a donor has sold his organs, this is a done deal," and relatives couldn't object, he said. "Why should it be legal to pay the transplant surgeon but not the donor?"
donations when they die. Blumstein said.
Jeremiah Turcotte, a University of Michigan surgery professor and director of the transplant policy center, blames the donor dearth on families being insensitive asked to donate when a loved one dies, as well as other factors, such as nervousness.
"What does brain death mean? We need public education," said Turcotte, a conference director. Publicity about transplant success rates boosts donations, he said.
"Wneed more organs, in an ethical way," he said.
Stuart Younger, an associate professor of medicine, psychiatry and biomedical ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said. "There are deep psychological barricades in these situations, things like how dead bodies should be treated and the status of the soul after death."
The organ supply also is easily affected by rumors, bad publicity, television shows or movies. Some transplant specialists think the 1978 movie, "Coma," about hospital patients being unwillingly used for their organs, still dampens donations.
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