U.S. Official Urges More Organ Donations

Recalling Deaths Of His Wife, Daughter, Moritsugu Says Many Could Benefit

By Marilynn Marchione

of the Journal Sentinel staff

Deputy U.S. Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu made an impassioned pitch Thursday for organ donation, telling poignantly of donating the organs of his wife and daughter after they were killed in separate accidents several years ago.

In a teleconference from New York, Moritsugu called the organ shortage "a medical problem for which there is a solution" and "a disease with a cure," and urged Americans to sign donor cards and discuss donation with family.

He's scheduled to make the same appeal today in Chicago as part of activities for National Donor Day, which is Saturday. The conference was held by the International Transplant Nurses Society and Roche Pharmaceuticals, which makes several drugs to prevent organ rejection, to call attention to the worsening organ shortage.

More than 67,000 Americans are on transplant waiting lists; a new name is added every 16 minutes. Only one in three will get an organ. A dozen or more each day - 5,000 a year - will die waiting.

The gap has led to arguments about how to allocate the short supply. New federal rules that would require wider sharing of organs and giving priority to the sickest patients were issued in November but put on hold by Congress until March.

Because of the organ shortage, surgeons increasingly are splitting livers to do two transplants instead of one, using more living donors for kidney and partial liver transplants, seeking laws to boost donation, researching the use of animal organs, and expanding the criteria for what constitutes a suitable donor.

On the last point, a renowned transplant surgeon argued at the news conference for wider use of organs from donors with hepatitis C, a liver disease.

"There is no evidence . . . of a significant degree of risk of transmission" of hepatitis C through donated hearts or kidneys, and the risk for livers is worth it if the recipient already has hepatitis C or would die soon without a transplant, said David Imagawa of the University of California at Irvine. "The use of these (organs) can increase our donations 5% to 10%."

Moritsugu is on the board of UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the nation's transplant system, as a representative of donor families, not as a public official. He recited the litany of people who benefited from his family's decisions to donate the organs of his wife, Donna, who was killed in an auto accident near their home in McLean, Va., seven years ago, and his daughter, Vikki Lianne, who was struck by a car three years ago.

He recalled the pain of neurosurgeons telling him they had done all they could do in his wife's case but were unable to save her. Remembering that he had discussed organ donation with her "and knowing that was what Donna wanted" made it easier to donate, he said.

"It was the right thing to do," he said. "I would encourage everyone . . . to share that (wish) with your loved ones."

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