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Rare 9-way Kidney Swap a Success

Posted by Soulskill on from the healing-with-math dept.

Okian Warrior sends news that a complex set of 18 surgeries has been successfully completed at California Pacific Medical Center and the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center that resulted in nine donors sending kidneys to recipients in need. This web of kidney swaps arose because many of the people with failing kidneys had donors willing to help them, but weren't a biological match. Rather than give up on the transplant altogether, doctors were able to arrange the willing donors in a way such that each patient who needed a kidney was able to get one. "Software matching programs have been driving the trend. The programs use blood type and other patient data from medical tests to connect people who are compatible."

16 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Piss-poor situation by penguinoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Part of the problem is the big shortage of organs. I'm not sure what to think about this, in that this sort of thing might decrease any purely voluntary no-strings-attached donations. Maybe we should just allow people to buy kidneys, instead of requiring this sort of complex web of conditional donation.

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    1. Re:Piss-poor situation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Beautiful libertarianism. The life saving organ transplants go to the wealthiest first, it's the free market and it's the fairest way.

    2. Re:Piss-poor situation by penguinoid · · Score: 2

      If kidneys could be bought, insurance companies would be happy to pay quite the price for them (compared to the cost of regular dialysis and additional health problems).

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      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    3. Re:Piss-poor situation by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 2

      Yeah, sue him. He'll have a hard time finding an attorney, given that all lawyers go to hell.

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    4. Re:Piss-poor situation by Rich0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Beautiful libertarianism. The life saving organ transplants go to the wealthiest first, it's the free market and it's the fairest way.

      This is zero-sum thinking. Most life saving organ transplants go to the grave right now. If there was a financial incentive to donate, then there would be a LOT more organs to go around. Sure, they would go to the wealthy first as you point out, but there aren't that many wealthy people out there (by definition), so many more will go to the rest of us.

      There isn't any aspect of life where the wealthy don't benefit more than the rest of us. If that were a reason not to do something, then for the most part nobody would do much of anything.

    5. Re:Piss-poor situation by AuMatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Better solution- make all organs automatically donated upon death. The owners don't need them anymore. Then no money needs to be involved at all, and we'd have a ready supply. The family can get what's left of the body after any usable organs have been harvested. Bonus- a system that's actually fair, rather than making money the determining factor.

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    6. Re:Piss-poor situation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then who would I do heroin with? I'm not some pathetic loser with no gf.

    7. Re:Piss-poor situation by ecotax · · Score: 2

      This is zero-sum thinking. Most life saving organ transplants go to the grave right now. If there was a financial incentive to donate....

      It's indeed a shame a lot of potential organ transplants go to the grave right now. Reasoning about this primarily in financial terms first makes no sense, though. After all, what am I going to do with the money when I'm dead? Bury it with me? OK, it could give me a good feeling if I knew it would help my relatives. But then it's about helping others, not about money, and this should be the starting point of reasoning about this issue.

      --
      "Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
    8. Re:Piss-poor situation by ecotax · · Score: 3, Informative

      Exactly my thoughts, except that people who really have problems with this solution for religious or whatever reason should have a way to opt-out. Simply changing the default from opt-out to opt-in would already make a big difference, maybe enough, maybe not.
      If that wouldn't be enough, the deal could be that people who choose to opt-out would be placed behind people who choose opt-in in on the waiting list in case they need an organ themselves. That would be fair and still leave people the choice to opt-out if they are really uncomfortable with the whole organ donation idea (personally, I'm not - dead is dead).

      --
      "Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
    9. Re:Piss-poor situation by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      After all, what am I going to do with the money when I'm dead? Bury it with me? OK, it could give me a good feeling if I knew it would help my relatives. But then it's about helping others, not about money, and this should be the starting point of reasoning about this issue.

      In the one case it is about helping strangers (the likely recipients of your organs), and in the other case it is about helping your family (the likely recipients of the money raised from selling your organs).

      People will do a lot more for their family than strangers.

      Also, in this case we're talking about kidney donations while the donor is still alive. It is very rare to have somebody walk into a hospital and just ask if they can donate a kidney for anybody who happens to need it. However, that is how many kidney transplants actually happen for family/friends. A nine-way deal was needed in this case because there were nine pairs of donors and intended recipients - none of those donors were stepping up to donate until somebody THEY knew needed their kidney.

    10. Re:Piss-poor situation by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      If you cannot see a flaw in the plan to give a monetary incentive to people for the case when one of their relatives dies, I can.

      Insurance already creates that incentive today. That is why the first people who get investigated when somebody dies are their heirs. I don't really see organ donations changing that.

      However, as with insurance it probably would require making the money from organ sales go straight to a beneficiary and skipping the estate. Otherwise anybody in heavy debt will probably elect to just let their organs rot, since it won't benefit anybody they actually care about.

    11. Re:Piss-poor situation by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      That sounds nice, but NO society on Earth actually works this way, at least not with regard to medical care. Try to tell me with a straight face that some member of a royal family in Europe waits the same number of days on average for an organ as the average citizen, etc.

      I'd actually agree with you regarding the application of criminal law. However, I don't see why the rich shouldn't be able to live longer than the poor. I do fully support raising the standard of care for the poor, and socialized medicine, and all that. However, I don't see any need to put a gun to the wealthy and prevent them from actively spending more on their care than society allots for everybody.

      I'm not a big fan of trickle-down but in this particular case I think it would actually work. However, I'm all for having socialized insurance that would pay for an organ for anybody who needed it and where the organ was likely to make a difference in their outcome.

    12. Re:Piss-poor situation by ecotax · · Score: 2

      In the one case it is about helping strangers (the likely recipients of your organs), and in the other case it is about helping your family (the likely recipients of the money raised from selling your organs).

      People will do a lot more for their family than strangers.

      Absolutely true, and I understand the way this worked in this case. I was just thinking out loud about solving the problem of donor organ shortage in general. I'm not expecting most people to volunteer being an organ donor while alive - it's simply asking a bit much. But many people could be convinced to potentially become an organ donor after death simply for altruistic reasons. Neither organs nor money aren't going to be of any use to you. Why not help someone else, even if it's a person you don't know?

      --
      "Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
    13. Re:Piss-poor situation by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      But would you consider helping your family financially more important than helping an unknown person fighting for his life?

      A quick glance at reality shows that nearly everyone would choose to help their relatives over some stranger. An organ market would allow them to do both.

    14. Re:Piss-poor situation by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Informative

      Other than it is illegal to sell an organ in any situation.

      You are wrong. In 2011, the average procurement cost for a kidney was $67,200. For a heart, you would pay $80,400. None of that goes to the donor, or the donor's family, except for reimbursement of direct medical expenses. It is a very profitable racket.

  2. Re:And also more poor people live by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 2

    A laughably worthless statement. Legalizing compensation for kidney donation in no way implies that someone who walks into a hospital with a bloody baggie refusing to tell them where the kidney came from must be served. The transplant team would obviously be working on both patients and do an assessment beforehand. This isn't Tor for kidneys; this is just compensation.

    If the black market for kidneys really does exist (isn't an urban legend), then increasing the supply of legal kidneys can only shrink the black market, not enlarge it. The demand for kidneys is, in other words, rather inelastic. People don't get addicted to them. They don't grind them up and inject them into a vein for a high. At least, I am assuming they don't.