Over the last 30 years, organ and tissue transplantation have become major components of the U.S. health care industry. Each year, more than 20,000 Americans receive organ transplants. A far greater number receive transplants of tissue, such as corneas and skin.
Desperate patients are not the only beneficiaries of this medical miracle, however. Organ and tissue transplantation have made fortunes for many individuals and companies, including transplant physicians, for-profit transplant hospitals, and pharmaceutical firms. The organs and tissues from a brain-dead but otherwise healthy patient can generate over $2,000,000 ($2 MILLION) in business for the medical industry. The total amount of money spent in the U.S. on organ and tissue transplants and follow-up care is around $8,000,000,000 ($8 BILLION) per year and climbing rapidly. So there is plenty of money to go around, right?
Well, not exactly.
One group is legally excluded from sharing in this cash bonanza: the people who make all of this possible, average Americans like us who generously consent to donating their organs, usually to complete strangers. You see, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 makes it a crime to "transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation." The penalty for violations can be five years in jail and $50,000 in fines. Often it is the poorest Americans who suffer from this law, since the best donors are young people who die violently in urban areas, close to transplant centers. The families of these gang violence, auto accident and drug abuse victims could sorely use a few thousand dollars to help them escape poverty (or at least pay the victim's funeral expenses), but the politicians won't allow it. For this and other reasons, many people have decided not to participate in organ donor programs. Instead, they have become Organ Keepers.
