The House of Representatives recently passed legislation that will help to protect some of the most vulnerable patients in need of organ transplants. As the mother of a daughter with a disability who may one day need a transplant, I applaud this compassionate and common-sense action. Yet it also speaks to the failures of our transplant system that lawmakers felt compelled to act in the first place.
The bill, the Organ Transplant Discrimination Prevention Act, sponsored by Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., does what its title implies. It directs the board overseeing the national organ transplant system, and other entities (like transplant hospitals), not to discriminate against an individual’s access to an organ transplant “solely on the basis of that individual’s disability.”
One might reasonably ask why this legislation should be necessary. Organ transplant centers already care for vulnerable patients, so why should they ever discriminate on the basis of disability? Unfortunately, that logic fails to consider the dysfunctional way our organ transplant system has operated for far too long.
Multiple investigations by Congress and outside entities have demonstrated the problems with the organ procurement organizations (OPOs) that run the transplant system nationwide. These regional organizations have had localized monopolies for decades — and their behavior reflects that fact. In many cases, OPOs have ignored patient complaints and lost organs during the donation and transplant process.
OPOs also have a history of discarding organs viewed as less-than-perfect, because staff view maintaining a good “success rate” for the transplants they do perform as preferable to performing more procedures
