The Organ Shortage Crisis in America

Nearly 120,000 people are in need of healthy organs in the United States. Every ten minutes a new name is added to this list, while each day eight people die waiting for an organ to become available. Worse, the gap between those in need of an organ and the number of available donors is growing: our traditional reliance on cadaveric organ donation is insufficient, and in recent years there has been a decline in the number of living donors as well as in the percentage of living donors relative to overall kidney donors. Some transplant surgeons and policy advocates suggest a market solution and legalizing the sale of organs, Andrew Michael Flescher objects to this approach, citing concerns about social justice, commodification, and patient safety. Given that, what is the most efficacious means of attracting prospective living kidney donors? Flescher, drawing on scores of interviews with donors and patients, suggests that inculcating a sense of altruism and civic duty is a more effective means of increasing donor participation than purely financial incentives. He encourages individuals to spend time with patients on dialysis, advocating donor "chains" in order to facilitate relationships between donors and recipients, and creating sacred spaces in hospitals such as a "wall of heroes" to recognize those who sacrifice their body parts for others.