MatchingDonors.com has its haters. The lifetime fee to be listed is quite a chunk of change, but the amount of promotion the site does is extensive, and … well, I think that though in a perfect world the service would be free, the fact is that the gentlemen have to make a living, and they’re providing a good service. One that hospitals should perhaps provide their patients.
And yeah, it puts all your personal laundry on display and advertises you like you’re on Petfinder.com, but as I’ve said before, kidney transplants are a “by any means necessary” situation. Do whatever you need to do to get a healthy organ.
Anyway, our story goes that Susan Krause was 69 and needed a kidney transplant. By the time she waited the average 8 years for her blood type and region, she might be too old for the surgery. Enter Robert Chiles, who couldn’t persuade his grandmother to take his kidney when she needed it. Through MatchingDonors, he chose Susan. Ba-dow. Kidney transplant in 90 days.
Here’s an interesting fact from the above-linked press release:
According to the National Kidney Foundation, ”Nearly one out of four (23.4%) of 1000 people queried told pollsters that they would be ‘likely’ to consider donating an organ to help save the life of someone they did not know.”
Excellent. Let’s stop debating the ethics of trying to make an appeal to these people and market to them so we can get them tested.
I talked to an organ donation organization here about doing some public speaking, and all they really were interested in was donation cards. Yeah, no thanks.
Donation cards are not the answer for kidney transplants, and here’s why (Thanks to Dr. Sally Satel for sending me a copy of her excellent book “When Altruism Isn’t Enough,” from which this quote comes.):
Of the roughly 2 million Americans who die annually, relatively few possess organs healthy enough for transplanting. The number is estimated to range between 10,500 and 13,000, representing less than 1 percent of all deaths each year. … (Incidentally, this built-in constraint on the number of potentially transplantable kidneys underscores the reason a “presumed-consent” law … is unlikely to yield a huge windfall of transplantable kidneys.)
If you factor in the thousands of people who never get on the kidney waitlist (Thanks to Andrew Conte and Luis Fabregas at the Tribune-Review for continuing to shed light on this issue.), and the people who die each year waiting, it is clear that less than 15,000 organs per year will never cut it.
The CDC’s unmet goal is to get 25% of those on dialysis onto the list, so figure the real list is at least quadruple the current 85,000-ish.
Donor cards are great for a lot of medical conditions, but they are not the answer for kidney transplants.
I hope everyone out there is an informed kidney patient and is taking steps to find a transplant if it’s medically indicated. And I hope that if you are walking around with a spare healthy kidney and you’d like to help, you’ll get involved. Contact me; I’m happy to assist.
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