How are special interests attempting to change our organ donation system? Elizabeth Tracey reports
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Is five years unacceptably long to wait on a transplant list for a donor heart? The son of a recipient thinks so, and is attempting to radically change our national organ transplant system. Johns Hopkins neuro critical care expert Adam Schiavi says testimony before Congress and other strategies have already had an impact on organ procurement organizations, or OPOs.
Schiavi: OPO's have actually been forced into changing their metrics and it's more about how many transplants are done. If they don't meet a metric then they risk being decertified. That would have like 75% of the 55 or 56 OPOs in the country, 75% of them just vanishing, which would essentially dismantle the program. And then the following year it would be another 25% and then you're down to only just a handful. :27
Schiavi says the fiendish complexity of organ donation and the host of ethical issues surrounding it accounts for what can look like massive delays for those waiting for organs, but it has been thoughtfully created and should not be replaced by a for profit system. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
