by Leonard Lu

About the author: Leonard Lu is a graduate of the Brown University School of Medicine and is currently conducting research at Harvard Medical School.

The limited supply of cadaveric kidneys coupled with an increasing demand for transplantable kidneys has forced the medical community to examine novel methods of organ procurement. Specifically, there are only about 10,000 cadaveric kidneys available for the 200,000 end-stage renal [kidney] disease (ESRD) patients in the United States. This shortage is compounded by the fact that the number of donors has plateaued, while the number of ESRD patients has grown at a rate of 8–9 percent per year. This trend is likely to continue so long as diseases such as diabetes mellitus remain incurable. One controversial approach for increasing the supply of kidneys is to implement a system of commerce in organ transplantation...