PATIENTS BEING DENIED ALL OPTIONS FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTS AVAILABLE TO THEM! (04/18/11)
Over the past 2 to 3 years I have had the opportunity to meet several transplant surgeons in other countries. Many of these surgeons were trained in the US or received at least part of their training in this country. These surgeons perform transplant surgery in foreign countries at hospitals which are Joint Commission International Accredited. The Joint Commission is the same accrediting agency which certifies all quality hospitals in this country.
Earlier this year, Francis Delmonico, M.D., head of transplant surgery at Mass. General Hospital in Boston, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, former President of UNOS, board member of UNOS, board member for the New England Organ Bank, Medical Director of the New England Organ Bank, etc., sent a letter to the federal Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) complaining about Americans going outside US borders to get life saving transplant surgery. He sent this letter to his old Mass. General Hospital buddy, Howard Koh, M.D., M.P.H., now Assistant Secretary of HHS for Public Health. Delmonico thanked Koh for sending a letter to some unidentified person to interfere with Americans going to Mexican transplant centers.
Delmonico ranted in his letter to Koh about Americans going to Mexico to victimize poor Mexicans and cheating them out of their organs. The letter is full of lies, distortions, exaggerations, and misinformation. Delmonico is a liar! He is unethical! He is not to be trusted! Of course, that is just one man's opinion. However, Delmonico's actions demonstrate the validity of that opinion. This man who makes millions of dollars ever year wants to deny legal and ethical transplants to Americans in need.
As a result of Delmonico's letter and Koh's response seems to have had effect. Two Americans who had identified altruistic, non-related, living donors had their kidney transplants at the last minute. These men did nothing illegal. They did not cheat any Mexican citizens out of their kidneys. They did not violate any Mexican or US law in advocating for themselves. Their prospective donors, true donors, were Americans. They stepped forward willingly in their desire to be altruistic. These men were delayed and eventually denied in getting kidney transplants here in the US. One man was trying to avoid having to start dialysis. The other had been on dialysis for more than 3 years.
We do need more organ donation! What we do not need is the dishonesty of the deceased 'donor' organ transplant system we have now operated by UNOS/OPTN and abetted by greedy individuals such as Delmonico. under the present system NO ONE GETS AN ORGAN DONATED TO THEM in a time of need. All of those organs come with a price tag euphemistically called 'ORGAN PROCUREMENT FEES'. UNOS and its cohorts wanting to protect this unfair, unethical, and deceptive system do so to enhance their incomes.
Interestingly, Delmonico apparently thinks it's perfectly legal for the UCLA liver transplant program to provide liver transplants to 2 Japanese organized crime figures. These men were not to be allowed in the US due to their criminal backgrounds. They went to UCLA, the livers they got were from the US cadaver organ supply. They got these livers ahead of all the others on the UCLA waiting list. Even after the transplants, UCLA physicians went to Japan to do follow-up, post transplant checks on these two.
UNOS/OPTN allows 5% of the US National Transplant Waiting List to be occupied by foreigners. This information was exposed in 2006 when a man from Toronto, Ontario, Canada received a kidney transplant at Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo, New York. A couple of years earlier he had paid a $40,000.00 deposit to the hospital's transplant center. He got the call. Traveled to the hospital about a 2 hour ride from Toronto. He got his new kidney. Nothing illegal in any of this. However, is it fair to all the other 80,000 people on the waiting list here?
APRIL 1, 2011 IS THE START OF ORGAN DONATION PROMOTION MONTH!
UNOS and all the OPO across the country have long been wrapping themselves in altruism, patriotism, motherhood, and the flag to try and convince the populace that they are reputable and trustworthy, non-profit charities. They have done a good job over the past 24+ years. The real truth is that UNOS was not even given a clean pass by the Better Business Bureau. They failed the standard for financial accountability in 2009 and 2010
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They have managed to convince most everyone that people actually get organs DONATED to them in a time of need. Not true.
The truth is, NO ONE EVER GETS AN ORGAN DONATED TO THEM. No money, no insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, NO ORGAN!!! These callous organizations have no concern for patients in need and their families. UNOS/OPTN/OPO executives are liars and cheats. These greedy entities do everything they can to make sure that national transplant waiting list stays as occupied as ever. For years these cheats have salivated as the waiting list numbers have gone beyond 100,000 very ill people.
The OPO, by law, can charge 'reasonable processing fees' for each organ. The charges are known as Organ Procurement Fees. These outrageous fees allow these UNOS/OPTN/OPO executives and managers to be paid salaries such as Tom Mone, CEO, OneLegacy, Los Angeles, who made more than $650,000.00 last year. Walter Graham, UNOS, CEO, made more than $550,000.00 last year.
Go to www.organtransplantfoundation.org and scroll down to the LifeLink OPO, Tampa, FL., 2008 tax return. You will see all those 'donated' organs were sold by just this 1 OPO for a total of $70 million. The 2 top executives each earned more than $600,000.00 in 2008. This is supposed to be a non-profit? Shouldn't people who run such health related non-profits have some modicum of altruism in their blood. Not the greedy OPO people!!!
LAX OVERSIGHT BY UNOS AND THE CDC ALLOW CONTAMINATED ORGANS INTO THE SYSTEM TOO OFTEN!
(03/20/11) This past week there was much publicity about an unidentified hospital in New York City allowing a contaminated kidney to be transplanted from a living donor. The recipient has now been found to be HIV positive. The reports go on to say that the testing for the HIV virus had been completed 79 days before the transplant. That is not unusual! The time it is taking transplant centers to test prospective living donors and then actually get to the transplant date is much too long. There is no clinical reason for such delays.
In my own case, it took Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital transplant center in Denver 8 months to complete compatibility testing on me and my donor, Rob Smitty. Even back then in 2004 when I had totally submitted myself to the transplant authorities and knew little about the transplant system I was frustrated by the seemingly endless delays, excuses, lost test results, and lack of response from transplant coordinators, nephrologists, and other responsible parties.
UNOS and too many transplant centers as well as the OPO do everything they can to discourage living donor transplants especially altruistic, non-related, living donors. The reason for this discouragement is money. Transplant centers and the OPO cannot charge organ acquisition fees for living donor organs as they do for cadaver organs.
I have blogged on this site in the recent past about the transplant center at Shands Hospital - Jacksonville being shut down last month. For the past 5 years a lady from Florida had been trying to find some responsible federal or state authority to investigate the Shands kidney transplant program. In 2004 the lady received a contaminated cadaver kidney which resulted in her contracting Hepatitis C. She filed complaints with UNOS, no response; she filed complaints with the Florida Department of Health, no response; she filed complaints with the CDC, no response; she filed complaints with the CMS Division of Transplantation, no response. So it went for 5 years. It wasn't until she was introduced to a former UNOS board member that she did manage to get her complaint heard. Even then there has been no explanatory or definitive response from any governmental agency. There is no way of knowing whether this lady's complaints had any impact on the decertification of the Shands transplant center last month.
UNOS/OPTN ALLOW PEOPLE ON THE NATIONAL TRANSPLANT WAITING LIST TO DIE.
(03/12/11) This past week I underwent surgery at a local, suburban Denver hospital. It was a parathyroidectomy. A surgical procedure which is not uncommon for people who have been on hemodialysis for a long time or who have had organ transplants. I guess I qualified on both counts. As I write this I am 2 days post-op and doing well except, I can't talk. I know there are some who will applaud that temporary malady. Beware, I have been assured I will be able to talk again by Thursday.
Just prior to the surgery a young anesthesiologist came to interview me. Pretty perfunctory stuff. Do you have any drug allergies? None known! Have you had anesthesia is the past? Any problems? Yes and no respectively! Pretty routine stuff. The he said, you've been down some rough roads over the past 10 years. I responded, "I must have missed something. I've had a pretty good life." He said, "Dialysis, surgeries, transplant, amputations, now this." Yes, all of those events and I'm still alive and enjoying life. I had never considered those years to have been traveled on a rough road.
This young physician, they are all young to me now, seemed puzzled. I told him all the people who have registered to be on the National Organ Transplant List are traveling a rough road and don't know it. They do not know that UNOS lists them in BAD FAITH. Money is the driving force behind UNOS and the greed of people like Walter Graham, millionaire and UNOS CEO!
The 'other' people I met or encountered at the dialysis centers between March, 1999 and October, 2004 had a rougher road to travel. The children are the ones coming back to me repeatedly. The fear in their eyes. Their mother's, tired, warn out, but never giving up, always there. I reflect back on the faces of the loved ones there with their mother, father, brother, sister...friend. Always there! We all sat there thinking I'm on the waiting list; my turn will come. Little did we know of the 'bad faith' environment we had been thrust into with insensitive and uncaring, money grabbing people running UNOS, the OPO, and the waiting list.
Now UNOS announces the proposed 'new' policy for kidney allocation. This proposal is not new. It will give people 49 years old and under priority for cadaver kidney transplants over people who are older. Despite the disingenuous press release, the 'new' allocation policy does not alter the status of children on the national waiting list. Children have always had priority. To assauge the fears of those 50 years and older the 'new' policy proposes offering them Expanded Criteria Donor (ECD) cadaver organs.
What are ECD organs? These are organs that up until recently were considered unsuitable for transplantation. These organs may have come from cadavers of 80 - 90 year old people; from diseased cadavers; from cadavers of people who had long term illnesses before death. The motivation behind this distribution of ECD organs is to charge organ procurement fees as the OPO do with all cadaver organs. You know, the average cost of a cadaver kidney in the US through one of the 58 OPO is $45,000.00. Then the transplant center hospital adds another organ procurement fee for themselves of $10,000.00 to $15,000.00. These fees are levied exclusive of any other hospital fees, surgical fees, physician fees.
The problem? UNOS and the OPO have not guaranteed that patients who may be offered these kidneys will be told the full medical history or pathology of the cadaver organ.
UNOS and the OPO maintain this is a proposed new policy. It isn't! The first time I heard about this discriminatory and repugnant policy was at an UNOS meeting in Dallas in February, 2007. Further, we know from medical records we have reviewed that these ECD organs have been transplanted into unsuspecting patients since early 2004.
So, if you are worried about contaminated, living donor organs being in circulation you must be even more worried about these so-called ECD organs. This is especially true if you or a loved one is waiting for a transplant. Will you be told the truth and be given the opportunity to make an informed consent to accept such a contaminated organ?
STRONG MEMORIAL HOSPITAL TRANSPLANT PROGRAM REFUSING TO PERFORM KIDNEY TRANSPLANTS FOR PATIENTS WHO HAVE FOUND ALTRUISTIC, NON-RELATED, LIVING DONORS!
Today, 03/04/11, we were learned the University of Rochester afflicted Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY continues to deny kidney transplants to patients who have advocated for themselves and found living donors.
Erica Walker, a 35 year old newly wed from suburban Buffalo had been trying to avoid having to start dialysis which is recommended anyone who knows anything about good health has been denied access to care at Strong. It seems this is the policy which has been adopted by the transplant team since at least 2005 when we assisted Jamestown, NY resident, Paul Cardinale, find a living donor through www.matchingdonors.com. After a long struggle with the unethical policies of the strong transplant center staff, Buffalo General Hospital agreed to transplant Paul in 2006. It appears Erica will have to endure similar frustrations. She is being denied her right to enjoy access to health care which, no matter the cost, is her legal right under state and federal law. This denial of access to care could be interpreted as patient abandonment which is illegal.
Today we will notify The Office of the Attorney General of New York and the health care regulatory authorities at the state and federal levels of these egregious violations of law and ethics. If you live the Rochester area, Strong Memorial Hospital, should not be your first choice for quality of ethical health care.
USC Kidney Transplant Program Transplants Wrong Patient!!!
Today's (02/18/11) issue of the Los Angeles Times reports that the long troubled USC transplant program transplanted a kidney to the wrong patient. Luckily, the organ was an acceptable match for the patient. Physicians at USC said 2 kidneys for separate patients arrived at the same time from OneLegacy an Organ Procurement Organization in Los Angeles. Of course, Tom Mone, OneLegacy, CEO, of course said it wasn't there fault. He claims the kidneys were packaged correctly. Mone is one of those obscenely wealthy OPO executives who earns more than $650,000.00 in salary annually.
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On our main page we have been disclosing the obscene salaries and income of CEO running some of the countries big health care related industries. Do you think $25 million is too much to pay one person? Well this is one reason why health care reform without cost controls will never work.
Below, we are going to look at the income levels of some people who run 'so-called' health related non-profits. The first group will be those who are involved in the human organ transplant industry. This is 'Golden Goose' territory folks!
First, let's look at some average salary levels for a few medical specialties just for comparison. According to salary.com the average income for a heart transplant surgeon is just under $500,000.00 a year. Orthopedic Surgeons make around $450,000.00 annually while pediatrians earn on average $155,578.00. Family physicians average income is $160,586.00.
Why then does Walter Graham, CEO, the United Network for Organ Sharing, a non-physician earn more than $500,000.00. How about Howard Nathan, CEO of Gift of Life in Philadelphia, an Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) making $475,879.00 a year? He's not a surgeon of any description, not even a physician. Even a small OPO such as the Donor Alliance in Denver CEO, Susan M. Dunn makes $242,904.00. The Donor Alliance has a real laugher! Stephen Kelley is listed as Chief Surgeon on their tax returns. Kelley is paid $205,696.00. He's the guy who recovers the organs from a dead person. He's not a surgeon either. Like Walter Graham, he's not even a physician. They get paid more than specially trained physicians. The Donor Alliance only made $32,624,415.00 in 2008 from organ sales!
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| United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is an Unethical Organization!!! Their Greedy Policies Kill People!!! |
There have been many investigative reports published with regard to the absolute failure of UNOS to carry out its government mandated responsibilities as the private contractor managing the national transplant system and related waiting list. UNOS has had this monopoly since 1986. Thousands have died because of UNOS incompetence and executive greed. Between 2006 and mid-2008 reporters for the LA Times, Ornstein, Weber and others published 27 investigative reports on the deadly mismanagement by UNOS. In 1996 and again in 1999 Forbes Magazine published the first reports on UNOS failures. The 1999 piece is reproduced below. Since 1999 things have only gotten worse and more deadly...
THE ORGAN KING
EVER SINCE FORBES EXPOSED THE federal monopoly that's chilling the supply of transplantable organs and letting Americans who need them die needlessly (Forbes, March 11, 1996). Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala has been trying to challenge the way United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) operates.
But the Richmond, Va.-based cartel will have none of it. Using a heavy-handed mix of litigation, lobbying and bullying of its opponents, UNOS has solidified its position as the federal contractor in charge of deciding which people get new kidneys, livers or hearts.
Under the UNOS system, most organs are shared only within 62 regional territories. A potential recipient in, say, New York, where donations are low, can expect to wait months for an organ to show, even though there may be so many donors across the river in New Jersey that New Jersey patients are getting transplants after short waits or when they are far from desperate. (Now. in 2009 the waiting times are measured in years for a transplant although the disparity between New Your and New Jersey continues with waiting times in New Jersey about 12 to 18 months while in New York the wait is years. This lack of equity continues across the country. Read "Death by Geography" in the LA Times. www.latimes.com/kidney transplants. Regional OPO do not want to transfer organs due to the desire to retain revenue from organ sales through these regional authorities in the local area. In 2006 total revenue to OPO from organ and tissue sales exceeded $2 billion.
Though UNOS has begun to relax the locals-first policy, still, last year 4,855 Americans died while waiting for transplants. (This doesn't even count people pulled off the list after they became too sick to handle a transplant.) It as a matter of debate how much lower the number of deaths would be if the system for obtaining and allocating organs were more rational. But Consad, a research outfit in Pittsburgh, estimates that at least 1,000 people die needlessly each year. (These numbers when revised to 2009 counts are dramatically different. Today 24 people die each day while on the transplant list. Even more egregious is the practice by UNOS of adding people to the list whom their physicians know will never qualify for a transplant. According to recent reports, Donna Leubke, a nurse in Cleveland, a living donor to her sister, and former UNOS board member, UNOS executives know at least 30% of the people listed on the national transplant waiting list should not be there because it is known they will never qualify for a transplant. As is noted later in this piece UNOS gets an annual registration fee for each person on the list.)
When Shalala urged that organs be shared over wider regions, UNOS Executive Director Walter K. Graham refused. He decreed, in a memo to his member hospitals and organ banks, that UNOS doesn't have to take direction from the federal government on this point.
UNOS' main source of funding is the $375 registration fee potential organ recipients must pay to get on the waiting list. That amounts to some $13 million a year, money that is supposed to be spent mostly to match organs with suitable recipients. In reality, at best half of the money goes to that. (Extrapolated for 2009, UNOS now collects $625 annually for each potential recipient. Today the waiting list population sits at 105,000. At $625 X 100,000, UNOS collects $62,500,000 just from these fees. The salaries get higher. The resorts for meetings get more lavish. More money is spent. Yet more people die!)
What about the rest? Graham and his 40 board members spend some $1 million (1999) on jetting around to meetings and conferences. A new $7 million headquarters building is planned. In 1997, some $1.6 million went for items network officials refuse to explain. "They really never tell you what they're spending money on," says veteran board member John Fung, a liver surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh. (Fung is now at The Cleveland Clinic. In August, 1998 Fung testified before a congressional subcommittee field hearing. During that presentation he stated, "...UNOS' stock in trade are lies and misinformation..." In reviewing UNOS' IRS 990 tax forms for 2006, the value of their Richmond, Va. headquarters was $41 million.
When Shalala tried to exert more control over the rising registration fees, Graham challenged her in a proceeding before the US General Accounting Office, claiming she had no right to even know how he spent the fees. The suit was settled; Shalala backed down.
Why not simply bring in another contractor to ration organs? Good luck. The congressional committee in charge of such matters is headed by Representative Thomas Bliley, from UNOS' home city of Richmond. His cousin Paul S. Bliley is a law partner of UNOS lawyer Malcolm E. (Dick) Ritsch. Last fall, then Louisiana Congressman Robert Livingston, whose home state includes eight profitable transplant centers, pushed through a bill halting further attempts by Shalala to control the contractor. ( As David L. Kaserman, Torchmark Professor and chair of the Department of Economics at Auburn University stated in the AEI publication, The US Organ Procurement System; A Prescription for Reform, "Everyone in the transplant system makes money except the 'donor'.
After the Senate rejected this moratorium, Livingston got it tacked onto another bill behind closed doors by threatening to hold up funding for the International Monetary Fund. The moratorium ends Oct. 21. But UNOS has already had Wisconsin Congressman David Obey tack another one-year extension onto a bill that was set to go to the full House for a vote in October. His state's four transplant centers stand to lose organs if UNOS loses it grip.
Craig Howe, executive director of the National Marrow Donor Program, recently expressed interest in having his organization bid on the organ contract. After UNOS found out he was interested, his board members, who include 14 physicians, axed him. Although some powerful and prominent surgeons like Fung are an exception, most doctors involved in the business fear offending UNOS lest their organ supply be affected. (In my own kidney transplant controversy on Oct. 18, 2004, UNOS threatened the hospital's transplant center's supply of cadaver organs if my transplant went forward. I had found an altruistic, non-related, living donor, Rob Smitty, through the Internet at www.matchingdonors.com. Only through local, national, and international media attention did I get the life saving surgery 2 days later)
In another instance FORBES is aware of, UNOS threatened to retaliate against an outfit it perceived as a rival bidder for an organ allocation job. Tax-exempt groups like UNOS are supposed to make their financial statements available for public perusal. But UNOS hides significant activity behind two little-known affiliates that aren't required to disclose anything. (This is a common practice within the healthcare arena and one of the major reasons healthcare costs in the US are out of control.)
The first is the UNOS Foundation, a six-year old shadow organization run by UNOS staffers. Spokesman Robert Spieldenner claims the foundation doesn't have to file tax returns because it brings in less than $25,000 a year. The UNOS Foundation owns something called the Transplant Informatics Institute, a for profit company run by organ network staffers. Transplant Informatices is so secret that even some UNOS board members are unaware that it exists. (Most so-called non-profit hospitals in this country set up similar tax avoidance structures. They set up satellite for-profit companies to hide profits.)
What does the institute do? The government thinks it markets UNOS-developed software to organ network members. In an audit looking into the use of registration fees for lobbying, the Office of the Inspector General got just that impression. What the institute really does is analyze and sell organ network data to profit-making companies like Fujisawa, the Japanese firm that sells drugs for transplant patients. When the institute has not been able to cover its costs with such sales, UNOS has used its registration fee income to make up the difference. Prospective organ recipients are therefore effectively funding this hidden business.
You'd think someone on UNOS' board would scream bloody murder about all this. After all, the 40-person board is almost half doctors, dedicated to saving lives. But the directors have little idea what's going on. "The board is kind of in the dark," signs patient advocate Charles Fiske, a former board member.
"We received an annual financial report and pretty much accepted it as written," says University of Oklahoma transplant doctor Larry R. Pennington, a board member from 1996 to 1998. "They really don't know how to interpret the data. All I'm familiar with is hospital sort of activity," admits transplant physician William Harmon.
Realizing that UNOS is out of control, Shalala has put out feelers for a replacement. "I hope we have some bidders this time," sighs Claude Fax, s pediatrician who, as administrator of the Health Resources & Services Administration, oversees transplants for Shalala. The only prospect so far is Santa Monica-based Rand.
Determined to see that Rand does not walk off with the contract, UNOS' lobbyists are pushing for a law that would insure that Graham's group will keep the contract forever. Last month Bliley's committee held hearings on a bill which would require the organ rationing contractor to have experience, something no group but UNOS has. It would also allow UNOS' members to vote on the choice.
Anything that gives more of a stranglehold isn't in the public interest," says Fox. "It's like giving the EPA to some land-fill company," says Fung.
It would be nice if UNOS didn't have a lock on this business. Better still if the federal government stepped out of the process altogether and let doctors come up with creative ways to increase the supply of organs. (How about giving people who sign up as potential donors when they are young some priority in getting organs when they are older?) Once there are enough hearts and livers to go around, there won't be unaccountable arbiters holding sway over our lives. (Dave Undis, a retired insurance executive from Tennessee has since implemented such an alternative. Go to www.lifesharers.org to learn more.)
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AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRANSPLANT SURGEONS HAS MEETING IN FLORIDA!
The American Society of Transplant Surgeons held their annual meeting in Marco Island, Fl from January 16 through 18, 2009. I have been reading and listening to transcripts of the gathering. To say I'm surprised is an understatement. Although I have not finished reviewing all the proceeding, I have gotten through a few sessions. One session in particular caught my attention.
Tell Her About It: Do Recipients of High-Risk Organs Require Complete Informed Consent?
Elsewhere on this site I have discussed the topic of informed consent as it relates to the UNOS proposed rule changes in consideration of Expanded Criteria Donor organs (ECD). I first heard about this in February, 2006 when I attended an UNOS regional meeting in Dallas. At that meeting the Kidney Allocation Research Subcommittee (KARS) presented recommendations for a revised kidney allocation system whereby organs which had previously been considered unsuitable for transplantation would be made available to people on the national waiting list.
This new proposal was presented along with a proposed method for recalculating who would get organs from the waiting list universe. LYFT was the new acronym. Life Years From Transplant is the complete term. The big change proposed in this inane and discriminatory proposal was that people 50 and older would no longer be in line for a kidney transplant as their name came closer to getting an organ. The first consideration for these folks would be LYFT. How long will they live after a kidney transplant? The blanket judgment was, not long enough, so they would be relegated to the netherworld of transplant medicine. The one caveat is, they could get a kidney transplant as long as they are willing to accept an organ that heretofore would have been discarded. The organ could come from some one very old and had a short probability of function left. It could come from some one with a previously diagnosed disease that rendered the kidney unsuitable but for those 50 and older a few more years of function might be squeezed out.
My concerns expressed at the meeting were two; 1) LYFT was arbitrarily discriminatory in that the policy would give those 49 and under an automatic higher priority than older patients. 2) Will potential recipients of ECD organs be fully informed of the etiology and pathology of the organ being offered. Assurances were given of course that would be the case as in all medical procedures where informed consent is required.
THAT WAS NOT A TRUE STATEMENT!!! Since 2006, six people in the Chicago area received kidneys from 'donors' infected with HIV. Four of those transplant recipients now have diagnosed HIV. Four patients in Indiana received kidneys from 'donors' diagnosed with cancer. Two of those transplant recipients got meta static cancer and died. Three of these cases are now in litigation. Tom Demitrio, a Chicago attorney, and Richard Hovde, an Indianapolis attorney, are prosecuting the cases. A lady in Florida received a kidney from a 19 year old 'donor' and has since contracted Hepatitis C. She is trying to find a lawyer to take the case for her. The problems are she lives in Florida, had her surgery at a University of Florida facility, Florida has a malpractice award cap against state facilities of $250,000.00. This amount would not even cover the legal expenses to sue. All of these patients were told the 'donor' organs were perfect matches. They were not provided with any 'donor' histories or pathology reports.
Now back to the ASTA meetings in Florida earlier this year. There was a debate as to whether patients awaiting kidney transplants should be told anything about 'donor' organs. The amazing thing is what was said, such as, patients aren't smart enough to understand even if they were told about the etiology and condition of the organs or the 'donors'. It would take too much time to provide all the details in order for a patient to make a fully informed consent as to whether they would accept a 'donor' organ from someone diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, cancer, etc. Only the surgeons are educated enough to make such decisions.
Well it appears that UNOS and the transplant surgeons are going to keep patients in the dark. If the patients gets a deadly disease they should be grateful; they got a few extra months or years of life. Never mind those years being filled with worry and anguish over a new deadly disease introduced into their body without their knowledge by the all-knowing transplant surgeon.
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