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Kindness of strangers

On the Web, access to potential human organ donors — for a fee

By Karen Goldberg Goff | Wednesday, July 30, 2008

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K arl Chapin's moment of inspiration came when he got a new wallet for Christmas. The 58-year-old, who lost a hand after he was wounded in Vietnam, was cleaning out his old wallet when he came across his organ donor card.

"I thought, 'I should use this now rather than after I am dead. Let's see if I can help someone,'" says Mr. Chapin, who lives in Grafton, Mass. "My wife said, 'Why don't you help by just doing the laundry?'"

Mr. Chapin made his way to Matchingdonors.com, a Web site where those who need an organ transplant can post profiles about themselves and their failing health in the hope of catching the attention of someone Mr. Chapin found Ricardo Mermet, a 58-year-old Boston-area restaurant owner who, as a result of diabetes and hypertension, needed a kidney. After many rounds of medical testing and psychological counseling for donor and recipient, Mr. Mermet received a kidney from Mr. Chapin in June.

Forty-five percent of the 13,300 kidney transplants in the United States last year were from living donors. An organ from a living donor has a slightly better chance of one-year survival than an organ from a cadaver, according to the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing. About 99,000 people are on the national waiting list for various organs. Seventeen people a day die while waiting for an organ transplant, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Clearly, people are looking for options to shorten the wait times and potentially save their lives.

Matchingdonors.com medical director Dr. Jeremiah Lowney says the nonprofit site has led to more than 80 kidney transplants since it began in early 2004. The site has 348 patient profiles.

Matchingdonors.com is one of a handful of sites that can match potential donors and recipients. However, it is the only one that charges a fee - up to $595 for full membership for potential organ recipients (although Dr. Lowney says no one will be turned away who cannot pay).

Critics, citing the inevitability of abuse, wonder: Are donor matching sites the first step on a slippery slope culminating in a black market in human organs that would exploit financially distressed donors and bypass the most medically needy recipients?

Dr. Timothy Pruett, director of transplantation surgery at the University of Virginia Health System and immediate past president of United Network for Organ Sharing, says his organization is not too concerned with how donors meet.

"We're not here to intrinsically judge why one person wants to help another," provided that "they do it within the moral and legal parameters," he says. "But we want to make sure they are really informed of what risks are involved. It is major surgery to lose a part of yourself."