Brother can you spare an organ (+)

We'll save your life for a price...
updated 2004-10-24

First it was websites that matched you up (for a small fee) with your soul mate (or at least the promise of a hot date) then came websites to help you get a great deal on a vehicle (for a small fee they mail you the ‘true’ invoice). Now we have MatchingDonors.com that will find an organ for you. Sounds great doesn’t it? Only catch is it cost the person looking for an organ $295 a MONTH for the service. I guess that is a small price to pay for a new lease on life.

It is illegal to sell human organs for transplant. All this site does is allow you to advertise your need and hope a donor will step forward. The site states "100% of the money paid for patient memberships is applied to running this site". What does the donor get out of it? The chance to undergo surgey with the hope you are saving the life of a stranger.

A 58 year-old man in Denver has become the first person to benefit from his MatchingDonors membership when he received a kidney on October 20, 2004. The donor is a 32 year-old man from Tennessee. I guess they really are the Volunteer State.

MatchingDonors is obviously providing a service people want and need but is it ethical? And the better question is why doesn’t a non-profit group provide the same service?


2004-10-24 related AP News story:Strangers' Organ Donations Concern MDs
The story raises several concerns

1) a not-as-sick person will "cut in line" and receive an organ over a sicker person on the waiting donor list

2) this will make it easier to illegally sell a body part

"hmmm, I need a new car, wonder how much a chunk of liver is worth on the transplant market."

It is gone now, but there was a Plasma Donation Center near my office. You know the type where they pay you for a unit of blood, extract the plasma and pump the rest back into you. The stereotypical plasma donor is a wino (forgive my non-PC tongue) chemically dependent street person. The people waiting outside staggered about giving the impression there was some truth to this stereotype. I guess if you were really desperate you'd be happy to have anyone donate an organ. How many bottles of Tbird will it take to buy a slightly used kidney? I see a whole new way developing to prey on people with addictions (and Third World citizens).

Anyone remember the Sci-Fi TV show Max Headroom? The ne'er-do-wells would conk some poor bloke on the head and sell him for parts at the organ bank. I'm sure this led to the urban legend "I woke up in bathtub full of ice and my kidney missing" stories but …Oh never mind I watched too much television in my younger days. I did like Max Headroom until he lost his news reporter job and took a gig pimping Coca-Cola