People are willing to do a lot for money. According to a new study, offering to pay for a kidney can increase donor rates.
For this study, the researchers headed by Dr. Thomas Peters, an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Florida College of Medicine, wanted to find another way to improve kidney donor rates, especially since more than 100,000 Americans need a kidney. The researchers surveyed 1,011 adults, 43 percent of whom were between the ages of 45 and 64, about their willingness to donate.
The researchers found that overall, 68 percent (689 people) said they would donate a kidney (humans can live normally with just one kidney). A smaller percentage, at 23 percent (235 people), said they would only donate a kidney to a certain person. Nine percent (87 people) said they would not donate at all.
When the researchers factored in compensation, they found that 59 percent of the people said they would be more willing to donate if they were paid $50,000. Thirty-two percent claimed that money would not affect their decision to donate or not to donate, and 9 percent said they were turned off by the idea of receiving money for a kidney donation.
The researchers noted that even though paying for organs will most likely not become a legal transaction, studying how money can affect donor rates could possibly lead to the development of new policies aimed at increasing these rates.
"While many transplantation professionals still oppose direct payments in organ donation, others affirm that financial incentives should be debated in public," the authors wrote in the study that was published in JAMA Surgery. "Offering $5,000 or $10,000 to give a kidney to family and friends or strangers, respectively, were amounts at which participants began to consider donation more positively. These authors further found that undue inducement payment levels for nephrectomy were $50,000 and $100,000 for family and friends and strangers, respectively, thus concluding that lower amounts of payment may motivate the public in an acceptable fashion."
Marco Del Chiaro, the co-author of an accompanying editorial that was also published in JAMA Surgery, stressed the importance of promoting living donors. Del Chiaro noted "the life expectancy and quality of life of living donors is comparable with the general population."
From 2004 to 2013, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reported that 63,742 people died while waiting for a kidney.
