A bill expected to pass the House of Representatives today will clarify that a life-saving procedure pioneered at Johns Hopkins is legal for nationwide use.
Pairing family members who want to donate to a loved one, but are incompatible with other patients has shown remarkable results at Hopkins and other centers around the nation, said Dr. Dorry Segev, transplant surgeon and professor at Hopkins. However, questions remained about whether it provided “valuable compensation” to the donors — a practice strictly banned under donor law.
“If your family member needed a kidney and your doctor told you were unable to donate to them, you would not likely give up a kidney for someone else,” Segev said ? unless your loved one benefited somehow. The Hopkins program scans a database of available organs, waiting recipients and live or “altruistic” donors, making matches and ultimately benefiting both the loved one and another person on the national organ donor waiting list.
Segev, who has modeled the program based on national databases, said 2,000 to 4,000 people each year want to donate for a loved one but are not compatible. The Hopkins program could match between 35 percent and 50 percent of these people to a third party so their own family member gets an organ as well.
The bill before the House “clarifies that this kidney pairing program in not valuable consideration,” Hopkins lobbyist Jim Kauffman said.
The change also allows federal funding to go toward paired kidney donor transplants, according to information provided by Hopkins. Nationally, more than 60,000 people wait for a kidney with health conditions that deteriorate every year, the release states. Six thousand people die annually waiting for kidneys.
Surgeons perform just under 10,000 transplants a year from deceased donors, Segev said. Another 6,600 kidneys come from live donors, though most of those are interested in saving a family member.
“We?ve had very small increases in the last 10 to 15 years” in deceased donors, he said. “In that time we?ve tripled the amount of live donors.”
At a glance
Details of the bill:
H.R. 710 ? Living Kidney Organ Donation Clarification Act (Rep.Norwood; Energy and Commerce)
The House meets at 2 p.m. for legislative business.
Votes will begin after 6:30 p.m.
H.R. 710 is 14th on the list.
