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View Full Version : The Organ Donor Clarification Act




Swordsmyth
01-05-2019, 09:54 PM
More than 700,000 (https://www.usrds.org/2018/view/v2_01.aspx) Americans are afflicted with kidney failure. Of those, almost 30 percent live with transplant kidneys with the remaining 70 percent on dialysis. Under a 1972 law (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-86/pdf/STATUTE-86-Pg1329.pdf), the federal government pays (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:42%20section:1395rr%20editio n:prelim)%20OR%20(granuleid:USC-prelim-title42-section1395rr)&f=treesort&edition=prelim&num=0&jumpTo=true) for kidney dialysis for every American whose private insurance does not cover treatment. In 2016, the latest year for which data are available, Medicare spent $35.4 billion (https://www.usrds.org/2018/view/v2_09.aspx)on patients with kidney failure (read: end stage renal disease).
While dialysis is better than nothing, it is not as good as a kidney transplant which typically allows the recipient to live a longer and healthier life. Unfortunately, another federal law, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, forbids (http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?hl=false&edition=prelim&req=granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title42-section274e&f=treesort&fq=true&num=0&saved=%7CbmF0aW9uYWwgb3JnYW4gdHJhbnNwbGFudCBhY3Q%3 D%7CdHJlZXNvcnQ%3D%7CdHJ1ZQ%3D%3D%7C11%7Ctrue%7Cpr elim) “valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” The law was apparently enacted in response a Virginia doctor’s plan (https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/24/us/buying-of-kidneys-of-poor-attacked.html) to buy kidneys from poor foreigners and poor Americans and then sell the organs to richer Americans.
The result of this well-intentioned but poorly conceived law is a severe shortage of kidneys. Currently, more than 95,000 (https://unos.org/data/transplant-trends/#waitlists_by_organ) Americans are on the waiting list for kidney transplants, but there are only about 15,000 (https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/view-data-reports/national-data/) transplants a year. In consequence, about 5,000 (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.14557) people a year die before they can receive a transplant.
Approximately 60 percent (https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/view-data-reports/national-data/) of transplanted kidneys come from deceased donors with the other 40 percent coming from living ones. Most people have two working kidneys and can live normally with only one. This makes living donations possible. Kidneys from living donors have a better (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.14557) success rate and are preferable if they are available.
The way to increase donations is to pay living donors or the estates of deceased donors compensation for their kidneys. Blood plasma donation provides an indication of how compensation for kidney donors would work. Compensating donors of blood plasma is legal in the United States but illegal or discouraged in some other countries, including Canada (https://blood.ca/en/plasma/donating-plasma/plasma-sufficiency). The result is that the United States has a more than adequate supply of plasma, as safe as modern science can make it, while other countries must import from the United States or risk shortages that endanger people’s lives.
A 2015 multiauthor study (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ajt.13490) estimated that paying living donors $45,000 and deceased donors $10,000 would produce a supply of kidneys for transplantation sufficient enough to end the waiting list and save the lives of the people who die before they can receive a transplant. Taxpayers would save money by paying donors because dialysis is expensive. Dialysis costs (https://www.usrds.org/2018/view/v2_09.aspx) an average of $76,000-91,000 per person per year, depending on the type of treatment. A transplant plus a reasonable level of compensation to the donor is therefore less than the cost of two years of dialysis. The 2015 study estimated that the federal government’s savings from allowing compensation to donors and ending the kidney shortage would be $12 billion a year. That’s not just for one year; it’s every year from now on.
In the outgoing 115th Congress, Matt Cartwright, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, has introduced the Organ Donor Clarification Act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6448) to allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to authorize pilot programs for organ donation. Cartwright has been laboring in this vineyard for a few years, along with a number of advocacy (https://www.organreform.org/) groups (http://waitlistzero.org/). His bill has the support (https://cartwright.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/cartwright-announces-legislation-to-increase-organ-donation) of a number of medical groups, including the American Medical Association. Cartwright’s bill aims small because that is all he has thought he could get from his colleagues. Now that the chance has arisen to think bigger, why not take his good beginning and allow full-fledged compensation programs, not just pilot programs? Adequate safeguards (https://sallysatelmd.com/category/organ-policy/) to meet any reasonable objection can be devised. In fact, most are already in place in the current system without compensation, as kidney donors will tell you.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-05/lets-fund-border-wall-and-save-5000-lives-year-too

H_H
01-05-2019, 10:39 PM
Putting other people's organs into your body is disgusting and sick. Is it wrong? Some may not think so; others may think so. Regardless, it is objectively the case that it is a practice that is fundamentally unnatural and will make a normal person want to vomit if he thinks about it. It's just not natural. Obviously. Understatement of the year.

Having these Franken-Abominations walking around among us is highly disturbing. Again, whether or not you have any moral stance against it. It's just unsettling, like Uncanny Valley. Are they human? Or are they monster? No one can say for sure; no one will tell us; if they know, they're not saying. And that's just profoundly disturbing.

phill4paul
01-06-2019, 06:05 AM
So when will women stand up and screech "My body, my rights!"