Abstract

KIE: Recognizing the increasing commercialization and "brokerage" of organs for transplantation, the Transplantation Society has produced guidelines for organ distribution and donation of kidneys by unrelated living donors. The guidelines, reprinted here, include the stipulations that "organs should be transplanted to the most appropriate recipient on the basis of medical and immunological criteria," that sharing of organs should be arranged by national or regional networks, and that transplant surgeons should not advertise. In regard to donation by unrelated donors, the transplant team must determine that the donor's motives are altruistic; active solicitation of living unrelated donors is held to be "unacceptable," as is payment to a donor by the recipient or any supporting organization.