Organ donation: Time has come for study of incentives

Innovative ways to encourage organ donors, including financial approaches, need to be examined in order to see which ones may be effective in increasing the number of cadaveric organs available for tranplants.

Editorial. Aug. 19, 2002.

In the words of the immortal Emcee and the entertaining Kit Kat girls of the Broadway musical "Cabaret," money makes the world go round.

Indeed, our current obsession with the daily ups and downs of the stock market would seem to prove this true.

Yet, there are still things the almighty dollar cannot buy in this country. Like a heart. Or a kidney. Or a liver. And mainstream media misrepresentations aside, the AMA House of Delegates did not vote earlier this summer to change that.

What it did do is open the door to scientific examination of what motivates people to donate organs and whether modest financial incentives for cadaveric organs would prompt more donations. After several years in which the number of organs needed has far outstripped the supply, this call for serious study and consideration is an idea whose time has come.

The oft-quoted statistics on donation rates are disturbing and worth repeating. About 6,000 patients per year -- 16 per day -- die of organ failure while waiting for a transplant.

The need for organs has grown nearly five times faster than the number of cadaveric donors. From 1990 to 2000, the increase in the number of patients on the transplant waiting list has increased an average 14.1% per year while the increase in donors has increased an average 2.9% per year.

Clearly, previous initiatives to increase organ donation, ranging from public information campaigns to donor registries, have not produced the desired result -- a significant drop in the number of people who die while waiting for a transplant. [...]