Doctor's unique donation prompts ethical concerns

A Chicago-area nephrologist's gift of a kidney to her patient raises the question of whether doctors should be living organ donors.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. May 19, 2003.

Dead or alive, Susan Hou, MD, was going to donate a kidney.

She thought about it 30 years ago when a fellow medical student was fighting kidney disease, but the student's brother stepped up. Dr. Hou, now a nephrologist near Chicago, pondered being a living donor to some of her patients, but the match was never right.

Then, about six years ago, she broke her back when she fell off a horse and thought she might have to be a cadaveric donor.

"I did make a point of telling [paramedics] that if I didn't make it, I wanted my kidneys to go to my patients," she said, her blue eyes aglow. "They kind of rolled their eyes at me and said, 'You'll make it.' "

Make it, she did. In more ways than one.

Last October, Dr. Hou, 56, donated a kidney to Hermelinda Gutierrez, 34, a mother of two.

Dr. Hou, medical director of the renal transplant program at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill., had told Gutierrez at their second meeting as doctor and patient that she wanted to give a kidney to her.

The transplant is believed to be the first time a U.S. physician has donated a kidney to a patient who is not family.

While many in the medical community praised Dr. Hou for her altruism, the transplant also sparked debate about whether it is ethically proper for a doctor to give an organ to a patient.

"If you have one kidney to give, how do you decide who to give it to? It's a precious gift," said Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.