A unique kidney transplant program will allow people to give their relatives the ultimate gift of life by giving their kidney to someone else. The New England Medical Center’s “Hope Through Sharing” program introduced this program when they offered a Fall River woman the chance to donate her kidney last month to a transplant patient in Greece to move her son to the top of the hospital’s waiting list.
The Bay State is the first to attempt this pioneering approach to organ transplants, which would bring new hope to families who suffer knowing that their relatives may die waiting for the right donor match. In New England alone, more than 350 people on these waiting lists may die this year.
The program may expand to benefit other organ transplants. In fact, Dr. Richard Roher, the hospital’s chief of transplant surgery, told the Associated Press that the program could work in the same way with liver and lung transplants, but would bring complex ethical questions.
While Roher and other doctors have raised concerns about the program’s potential ethical implications, it would serve to benefit everyone involved in the long run. Although the program’s kidney donors may be motivated for purely selfish reasons to give their organs to other patients to save their loved ones, their sacrifice would not only help their relatives but also aid another person in need.
Another ethical concern about this program is that not everyone has relatives who would be willing to participate in the program. Don’t these patients have just as much of a right to have a second chance at life as people whose relatives participate in the program?
The sad fact is that about 75,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant, and about 48,000 of them need kidneys. For those patients without family members who are unwilling or unable to donate kidneys, they have to wait, on average for three to four years in the Bay State, until a compatible donor surfaces.
Other hospitals in the Bay State and around the country should model similar programs after this one because it helps to increase the number of organ donors and provides willing donors with a way to help their family members as well as someone else. It’s a win-win situation, and the New England Medical Center should be commended for designing such an innovative program.
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