Viewpoint: Yes, a nationwide system—made possible through advances in the transportation and storage of organs—would be the most equitable method to distribute human organs.

Viewpoint: No, a nationwide distribution system would introduce new inequities to organ donations. The current system of regional and local distribution is superior.

During the second half of the twentieth century, surgeons developed procedures for transplanting kidneys, livers, and hearts into patients whose own organs were failing. The American physician Joseph E. Murray performed the first successful human kidney transplantation in 1954. In...