Dr. Murray Feingold: A new day in organ donation?

By Dr. Murray Feingold

GateHouse News Service

January 19, 2009

When I read that a fellow physician was demanding that his wife return the kidney he donated to her, or give him $1.5 million, I was saddened that a person dedicated to healing the sick would act in such a manner.

As the story unfolded, the reason for his behavior was, allegedly, that his wife was unfaithful to him. Now, this messy marital issue will be decided by a court of law.

I'm sure that the physicians who did the first organ transplant never envisioned that such a lawsuit, especially involving another doctor, would ever take place.

In 1960, the first transplant took place when a donor liver was transplanted into an individual who desperately needed a new liver.

Seven years later, the first heart transplant surgery was performed. The patient lived for only 2 1/2 weeks after receiving the new heart.

The advent of transplant surgery resulted in new ethical issues. The major one was, since transplant organs are not plentiful, who should receive the life-saving organs? After many years of discussion, most of those issues have been resolved.

With this present episode, new issues have been raised.

What rights do a disgruntled donor have when he or she wants his or her donated organ back? And what are the rights of the person who received the life-saving organ?

I am not an ethicist who can pontificate about what is morally right or wrong and answer these questions. However, my common-sense reasoning tells me it would be obviously wrong to remove the kidney, and I trust that no court in the country would sanction it.

What about financial compensation for the kidney and for the stress and trauma the doctor underwent when he donated the kidney? I also find a financial reward to be unacceptable.

But this is a new era of decision making and perhaps I am still stuck in the old one.

Some recent court decisions have baffled me, so a legal decision forcing the wife to give back her kidney would not surprise me.

It was not that long ago that being a doctor meant treating a strep throat or other ills that did not have as many ethical ramifications.

When I hear of stories such as this one, I sometimes yearn for the good old days when life was much simpler.

Massachusetts-based Dr. Murray Feingold is the physician in chief of the National Birth Defects Center, medical editor of WBZ-TV and WBZ radio, and president of the Genesis Fund. The Genesis Fund is a nonprofit organization that funds the care of children born with birth defects, mental retardation and genetic diseases.

Copyright © 2009 GateHouse Media, Inc.