Yale Professor Urges Payment For Organ Donation

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October 9, 2006

K. Brunskill

New Haven,

CT - A Yale University School of Medicine professor says a regulated

system for paying people to donate organs would diminish the

" desperate " need for organs and counter exploitation.

Professor Amy Friedman, who has worked as a transplant

surgeon for 15 years, believes paying organ donors through a government-supervised

system would help bridge the gap of access to transplants between those who

have money and those who do not. Even though there currently are laws

prohibiting the sale of organs, some wealthy people are able travel to other

countries to buy organs such as kidneys.

Friedman says all laws would have to be monitored, most

likely by the government, and supervised by medical and transplant

professionals, representatives of patients and donors, and social workers.

Friedman says, " Bringing these activities out of the

closet by introducing governmental supervision and funding will provide equity

to the poor, who will have equal access to such a transplant. "

However, other experts believe such a system would inevitably

create more exploitation and would end up hurting the very people Friedman aims

to help - low-income people who are desperate for money.

Professor Wigmore, chairman

of the British Transplantation Society Ethics Committee, tells BBC News,

" The problem still remains that nobody is going to sell a kidney unless

they need the money. Even if you give a kidney to a poor person, it's still

going to be a vulnerable person who donated it. "

He said, " ... people don't

really know what happens to living kidney donors in the long term - do they

have normal mortality or do they develop kidney failure at 60 and need a

transplant themselves? "

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