Search for Transplant Organs Becomes a Web Free-for-All

The site that Griffith is using, MatchingDonors.com, has attracted the most attention and controversy because it charges fees -- $595 for unlimited access or $295 a month -- raising the specter of a commercial market in organs.

The site's founder maintains that all income goes toward running the operation, which routinely waives charges for anyone who cannot afford it. Griffith, for example, said the site waived his fee.

"We're not in this to make money. We're in this to help people. I'm a volunteer," Jeremiah Lowney, the site's medical director, said. The site lists about 2,300 potential donors and about 100 possible recipients, and claims to have facilitated more than a dozen transplants since 2004. Dozens more possible matches are going through a screening process.

But even if sites do not charge, many ethicists and transplant surgeons fear the trend runs counter to a time-tested system that tries to guarantee that the sickest patients get organs first.

"Our organ allocation system is imperfect, but there is a lot of effort and a lot of thought to make it as fair as possible. Once you go down this road and allow people to jump ahead in the queue through a popularity contest through the Web, you can be assured justice goes out the window," David Magnus, a Stanford University bioethicist, said.

Aside from potentially giving the more affluent, educated or computer-literate an edge, allowing donors to designate their recipient can lead to discrimination, Magnus and others say.

"You could easily see a situation where you have a donor who says, 'I'm only going to donate to a white person,' or 'I'm only going to give to someone with my religion,' " said Douglas W. Hanto of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who represents the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

Proponents, however, say that with computers available at public libraries, everyone has access, and no group is more or less likely to get offered organs. Donors tend to be drawn to recipients for very personal reasons. They may pick someone with common interests, a similar family background, or who reminds them of a beloved family member. And that cuts across racial, ethnic and religious lines, proponents say.

"I just wanted to help someone. I didn't have any particular kind of person in mind," said Gary Wang, 52, a single, gay Chicago book editor, who hopes to donate a kidney to Corey Briggs, a 36-year-old divorced father of two. Wang found Briggs on MatchingDonors.com.

"He is a nice guy, a former police officer as well, and someone who strikes me as wholly deserving of my help," Wang said. "I just want to make a difference for someone, and it's nice to know who that person is."

Karen Traxler, 37, of Greeley, Colo., who received a kidney in June from a donor she met via the Web, said, "I don't think it's a matter of the prettiest picture or the best story. It's a matter of a connection between the donor and the recipient.

"I know people who have chosen older people because their grandmother was sick. . . . People have all sorts of reasons," she said.