The National Kidney Foundation vs. Open Debate and Increasing Kidney Donations

by Virginia Postrel  •  Jun 2, 2006 at 2:03 pm

http://www.dynamist.com/1693/the-national-kidney-foundation-vs-open-debate

The National Kidney Foundation is behaving reprehensibly, especially given its mandate. When I first got interested in organ donations, I naively thought that the foundation would be in the business of doing everything possible to encourage kidney donations. I was terribly wrong. The group vehemently, and successfully, opposed a bill that would have allowed tests of incentives for organ donors. (CEO John Davis brags here, scroll to second item.)

So determined is the NKF that kidney donors should never, ever, in any way be compensated for their organs--no matter how many kidney patients current policy kills--that the organization is now trying to stamp out public discussion of the idea. When they heard that AEI is planning a conference on the subject for June 12, they wrote a letter to AEI president Chris DeMuth suggesting that the conference shouldn't be held. The letter from NKF chief Davis (PDF available here) opens:

The officers and staff of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) were surprised to learn that AEI has scheduled a forum entitled "Buy or Die: Market Mechanisms to Reduce the National Organ Shortage" that will be held on June 12, 2006. We agree that there should be open discussion of all reasonable approaches to increase organ donation, and that the shortage of organs for transplantation deserves greater attention by policy makers. Nevertheless, we believe that the concept of financial incentives has been adequately debated for 15 years, begining with the National Kidney Foundation's 1991 workshop on "Controversies in Organ Donation," and culminating in the definitive Institute of Medicine (IOM) report that was issued late in April 2006. We don't see how an AEI forum would contribute substantively to debate on this issue. [Emphasis added.]

In other words, "We'd like to maintain our monopoly on the policy debate, so please shut up."

Keep in mind by way of context that there are 66,000 Americans on the waiting list for kidneys and that if every single person in the country agreed to be a post-mortem kidney donor, that would only double the supply of cadaver kidneys to about 13,000 a year, since a relatively few causes of death allow for organ transplants.

For more background on the policy debate, see previous posts here, here, and here. Marginal Revolution blogger and GMU economist Alex Tabarok takes a detailed look at incentives here.