10/1/02

Bob Lowry, 334/844-9999

COMMENTARY: 6,000 DIE ANNUALLY AWAITING ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

Our nation recently paused to remember and mourn the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11. The innocent lives lost in that brutal and unconscionable act weigh heavily on the hearts of moral people everywhere, regardless of their national origin or religious affiliation.

It is entirely appropriate that we express, both publicly and privately, our anguish and dismay at the lives so needlessly wasted. And it is also appropriate that those lives be somehow made more vivid through a public reading of the victims' names.

At the same time, we must not allow this tragic event to distract us unduly from other, equally deplorable sources of human suffering and death. One such source is our current cadaveric organ procurement policy.

Specifically, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 forbids any payment to organ donors or their surviving family members to encourage an increased supply of cadaveric organs for transplantation. While all other participants in the transplant business receive market-determined prices for their services, the people who make the procedure possible must go uncompensated.

As a direct result of this ill-conceived policy, we are currently losing more than 6,000 lives annually (twice the toll of the 9/11 attacks each year). Due to the organ shortage that has predictably been spawned by this legislation, there are now more than 85,000 people who are silently waiting for either a suitable donor organ to become available or death, whichever comes first.

Less than half of these individuals are expected to survive long enough to realize the former life-saving outcome.

Ironically, unlike the war on terrorism, the solution to this ongoing tragedy is both well-known and straightforward. Simply by repealing the National Organ Transplant Act and allowing cadaveric organ markets to form, prices to donors and their families can rise to equilibrium, market-clearing levels. The organ shortage will disappear, waiting times will shorten and tens of thousands of innocent lives will be saved.

Until Congress takes such action, however, the organ shortage will continue, as it has for at least the past two decades. And the death toll will continue to mount. Tragically, the victims will die not at the hands of foreign terrorists but, rather, due to the callous disregard of their own government.

And sadly, there will be no public reading of their names.

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(Kaserman is the Torchmark Professor of Economics at Auburn University. He is the principal co-author, along with A.H. Barnett, of The U.S. Organ Procurement System: A Prescription for Reform. He is also a kidney transplant recipient.)

oct02:AU-transplants