Thursday, March 17, 2016

German organ transplant law should be amended or reinterpreted to allow kidney exchange: my op-ed in Der Tagesspiegel

During my recent visit to Germany, I spoke with a number of people about the fact that the German transplant law effectively outlaws kidney exchange.  I was invited to write an op-ed on the subject for the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, and it has just appeared:


Normally at this point I would use Google Translate to give a sense of the article, but in this case, since I wrote the op-ed in English, I can give you the original:

German organ transplant law should be amended or reinterpreted to allow kidney exchange
By Alvin E. Roth[i]
Kidney failure is epidemic around the world, and a shortage of organs for transplantation condemns many patients to dialysis, and early death. 

Most transplantable organs come from deceased donors, and there aren’t enough to fill the need. But because healthy people have two kidneys and can remain healthy with one, a healthy person can donate a kidney to a sick person.  A living-donor kidney works better than a deceased-donor kidney.
In the U.S. we now have around as many living donors as deceased donors (although we still have more deceased-donor transplants, since a deceased donor donates both kidneys).

But living donation isn’t always possible, even when a willing donor is available, because a kidney must be well-matched to its recipient. Often the life-saving gift cannot be given, because the donor’s kidney is incompatible with the patient. (It is now sometimes possible to successfully transplant an incompatible kidney, but, like a deceased-donor kidney, this does not keep the patient as healthy for as long as would a compatible living-donor kidney.)

In the U.S., there is a way for incompatible patient-donor pairs to help each other, through what we call kidney exchange, or kidney paired-donation. In its simplest form, two incompatible patient-donor pairs are identified by their doctors such that each patient is compatible with the kidney of the other patient’s donor. Then four surgeries are performed, two nephrectomies and two transplants, so that each donor gives a kidney and each patient receives a compatible kidney. Kidney exchange has become a standard form of transplantation in the U.S., and has saved thousands of lives. (This is one of the “matching” markets I helped design, and wrote about in my recently translated book, Wer kriegt was - und warum?.)

Notice that no money changes hands in this paired donation. It is just an exchange of gifts between two patient-donor pairs, which allows each donor to save a life and see his intended recipient restored to good health.
Laws around the world prohibit buying a kidney for transplantation, because of fear that allowing organs to be sold would exploit the poor and vulnerable. (The single exception is Iran, which has a monetary market for kidneys.) But German transplant law  imposes a severe further restriction: a patient may receive a living-donor kidney only from a member of his or her immediate family. This means that, unless a judge intervenes, kidney exchanges are illegal in Germany. (This law also restricts the number of direct living donations in Germany compared to countries like the U.S., in which uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues, members of the same church, etc., are often living donors.)

I surmise that the reason for this strict limitation in German law is to remove any possibility that a kidney being transplanted has been purchased rather than freely given. But if when you want to give a kidney to your brother there is no suspicion that you are a paid organ-seller, you should remain above suspicion even if your kidney is incompatible with your brother. Kidney exchange allows you to give a kidney and save a life, and have your brother’s life saved. Kidney paired donation is a mutually beneficial exchange of life-saving gifts, not a commercial transaction.

The U.S. law that includes the prohibition on organ sales is the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984.  When American surgeons explored kidney exchange in the first decade of this century, it wasn’t initially clear what its legal status might be, but in 2007 Congress passed an amendment to the NOTA making kidney exchange explicitly legal.  Kidney exchange is legal elsewhere in Europe, and is well developed in the Netherlands and Britain. A similar amendment to the German law, or even instructions to judges that kidney exchanges should be allowed after being examined, could save the lives of many patients in Germany, without opening to door to commercial transactions in body parts.




[i] Alvin Roth, a professor of economics at Stanford University, shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on market design. His recent book about markets has just appeared in German translation, Wer kriegt was - und warum?: Bildung, Jobs und Partnerwahl: Wie Märktefunktionieren

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