Police seek kidney donor

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities are seeking to extradite a Tennessee man — wanted for failing to pay child support — after learning that he underwent surgery in Colorado to donate his kidney to someone he met on the Internet.

Robert Smitty, 32, faces charges of failing to pay his ex-wife $8,100 in child support and medical payments, and a warrant is out for his arrest. He was recovering in a Denver hospital after surgery Wednesday to donate his kidney.

A Bradley County Sheriff’s Department spokesman said Friday that prosecutors were looking into whether Mr. Smitty could be extradited.

Mr. Smitty and the operators of MatchingDonors.com, the Web site where Mr. Smitty was matched with kidney recipient Bob Hickey, maintain the donation was not motivated by money. Mr. Hickey is expected to pick up about $5,000 in transportation costs and other expenses incurred by Mr. Smitty.

On MatchingDonors.com, people are looking for strangers who might give a kidney or piece of liver.

“My friend, Josh, is 26 years old and needs a kidney transplant. He has had cancer since the age of 2,” reads one message.

“Vietnam Veteran with 3 little children desperately needs AB+ liver,” says another.

The national transplant waiting list has grown to more than 87,000 because organ donations from the dead have not kept up with demand. For help, frustrated patients increasingly are turning to the living, even to strangers.

That worries bioethicists, surgeons and federal officials who oversee the transplant system, which is designed to treat all patients fairly.

Most troubling is the concern that people will buy and sell organs, an illegal practice that is difficult to uncover if participants are willing to lie about it.

Denver doctors delayed Mr. Smitty’s surgery for two days amid concerns about the for-profit site and questions about whether the recipient might be paying the donor for his kidney. After the hospital got both men to sign affidavits swearing there was no such payment, the surgery proceeded.