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Doctors OK Web-Arranged Kidney Transplant

Posted on: Wednesday, 20 October 2004, 10:00 CDT

DENVER - Doctors who postponed a kidney transplant between two men who met through a private organ donation Web site decided Tuesday to allow the operation to proceed, despite legal and ethical concerns about the surgery.

The operation, scheduled for Wednesday, is believed to be the first transplant arranged through a Web site designed to match organ donors with recipients, said Jeremiah Lowney, medical director of MatchingDonors.com, where the two men made contact.

Doctors at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center initially postponed the procedure to replace Bob Hickey's kidney as he was in a hospital room with IVs running from his arm. The hospital's ethics committee said Tuesday that the operation should be allowed to go ahead as long as both men pledged that neither was profiting financially.

Rob Smitty, who read Hickey's story on the Web site and agreed to give him a kidney before the two had ever met, said he felt vindicated by Tuesday's decision.

"They're allowing me to do something just good for this man," said Smitty, of Chatanooga, Tenn.

In a statement, hospital CEO Mimi Roberson said the decision to allow a "compassionate exception" does not mean the hospital is endorsing the Web site, and said officials will give greater scrutiny to such transplants in the future.

Hickey said he first learned about MatchingDonors.com in January, the same month the Web site became operational. The company, based in Canton, Mass., charges varying fees - sometimes $290 a month - to post profiles of people looking for live organ donors.

Hickey, who has needed a transplant since 1999 because of a kidney disease, was tired of waiting on the national donation list. Within three months of posting on the Web site, he received 500 offers for donations, which he eventually whittled down to Smitty, a part-time photographer and food distributor.

"It gave me so much hope," he said.

Hickey said his agreement with Smitty is legal. As allowed by law, he is paying Smitty for his family's trip to Denver and his lost wages. He estimated the total cost at $4,800 to $5,000.

United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization that matches organ donations to patients in the United States, has come out against the Web site, saying it takes advantage of vulnerable transplant candidates and donors and subverts the equal allocation of organs.

Mark Yarborough, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, said he was concerned about the Web site's fairness and potential lack of oversight by medical professionals.

"This kind of system potentially may make the overriding criteria (to receive an organ) the ability to pay," he said.

Lowney said the company waives its fees when people cannot afford them. All fees go to maintaining the Web site, the company says.

He also said he sees nothing wrong with people wanting to help a specific group of individuals, such as a firefighter donating his kidney to another firefighter.

"I don't have a problem with that, as long as we can get people organs," he said, adding he doubted the Web site would ever lead to discrimination. "If you're a hateful person, you're not going to be someone who wants to be an organ donor for a stranger in the first place."

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On the Net:

United Network for Organ Sharing: http://www.unos.org

MatchingDonors: http://www.matchingdonors.com

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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