A pilot project to see if paying donors for donated kidneys – sounds like it would be a no brainer to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF). But this proposal to adjust a law by the American Medical Association has received fierce opposition from NKF.
According to Sally Satel, MD in Slate: Organ Failure: Doing Battle with the National Kidney Foundation. Early this summer, the American Medical Association voted to lobby Congress to permit the study of financial incentives for organ donation. With nearly 100,000 people on the national transplant list and 18 dying every day for want of an organ, the AMA resolution to address the organ shortage could not be more timely.
And yet the National Kidney Foundation, the nation's largest advocacy group for people with kidney disease, won't be a reliable ally. The NKF, which has a $32 million annual budget and is to kidney disease what the American Lung Association is to asthma, says it laments that thousands "die while waiting for that 'Gift of Life.'" But instead of locking arms with the AMA, the kidney foundation is poised to sabotage the association's efforts—in keeping with its recent practice of blocking any attempt to explore the possibility of compensating organ donors. Why the stubborn opposition?
I remember when a friend of mine was asked to donate a kidney by a non relative, the conversation was focused around what that meant, what are the potential long term health consequence, how could he afford the time off work, what would this mean to his life going forward. I truly believe if there was some financial incentive the decision may not have been quite so painful and in the end he decided not to donate his kidney and unfortunately the person died several months later. The NKF in their statement say Any attempt to assign a monetary value to the human body, or body parts, either arbitrarily, or through market forces, diminishes human dignity. By treating the body as property, in the hope of increasing organ supply, we risk devaluating the very human life we seek to save. Providing any form of compensation for organs may be an affront to the thousands of donor families and living donors who have already made an altruistic gift of life and it could alienate Americans who are prepared to donate life-saving organs out of humanitarian concern. In addition, it disregards families who are unable to donate organs but do consent to tissue donation.
I wonder how many lives would be saved if we did not exclusively rely on “altruistic gift of life”. This makes me wonder, how many families are out there who if there was a financial incentive it would have made their decision to donate a whole lot easier.
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