AMA meeting: Delegates seek to change law on organ donor incentives

The proposal would make it legal to conduct ethically designed pilot studies of payments for cadaveric donations.

By Kevin B. O'Reilly, AMNews staff. July 7, 2008.

Chicago -- With the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list approaching 100,000, the AMA House of Delegates voted in June to put the prospect of paying organ donors high on its legislative agenda.

Six years ago, the house approved studying benefits and harms of financial incentives for cadaveric organ donation. But even testing the idea on a demonstration basis is illegal under the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, which bans "valuable consideration" in exchange for organ donation. The change would not apply to living organ donors.

"If there are other ways to increase the supply of transplantable organs and do it in an ethical way ... it is worthwhile to at least study," said AMA Board of Trustees member Joseph P. Annis, MD. "We need to expand the number of donors, and we should look at every ethical way that we can do that."

Alternate delegate Gerald A. Wilson, MD, a Columbia, S.C., general surgeon, said that in his work with the state organ procurement organization, he has encountered families of donors who ask for financial help with burial expenses.

"By law, we're prohibited from doing that," said Dr. Wilson, who introduced the resolution adopted by the house. "We cannot put a price on tissue or human life, but there is a need to see if it's possible to increase the number of organ donors."

As many as 7,000 patients die while on the waiting list, and since 1988, 75,000 have died waiting for a donor organ, according to the resolution.