By John A. Schall

We have great news to report! This spring, Congress passed H.R. 710, the Charlie W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act, which allows paired kidney donations. AAKP has long been advocating for passage of this important legislation in order to increase the number of available kidney donations. This legislation gives new hope to the over 70,000 Americans waiting for a kidney transplant today.

Through paired kidney donation, two or more sets of intended living donors and candidates are matched to find biologically compatible donors. H.R. 710 clarifies that paired kidney donations do not violate the prohibition in the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act against “valuable consideration.”

History was made last November when doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital performed the first-ever quintuple kidney transplant. Twelve surgeons simultaneously operated for ten hours on ten different people – successfully transplanting organs into five individual patients in need of a new kidney.

This dramatic life-saving event helps explain the tremendous benefits that can result from such procedures. It is estimated that paired kidney donations could increase the number of organ transplants by 1,500 to 2,000 each year. AAKP especially thanks Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) for sponsoring the legislation with the late Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA), and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) for introducing the companion bill in the Senate, S. 487. AAKP is very grateful for their leadership on this legislation that will save literally thousands of lives.

A Very Personal History

How this law came to be passed is a story of how personal experiences can drive the law-making process in Washington. Charlie Norwood was a dentist who got elected to Congress from the state of Georgia in 1994. Norwood has always been a strong advocate for organ transplants. He personally suffered from lung cancer and received a successful lung transplant. But the cancer spread to Norwood’s liver and he died on February 13 of this year. Before he died, Charlie Norwood wrote a letter to Congress asking that the paired kidney donation bill he introduced with Congressman Jay Inslee become law. Congressman Inslee, too, had always been a strong champion of kidney care issues. Just two weeks after Norwood’s death, Congressman Inslee’s mother, Adele Inslee, died at age 78 of complications from kidney disease.

The Congress was not slow to act on Charlie Norwood’s dying wish. On February 14, the day after Norwood died, the Senate passed Sen. Levin’s paired kidney donations bill, S. 478, by unanimous consent. And on March 6, the U.S. House of Representatives passed their own paired kidney donations bill, H.R. 710, by a vote of 422-0. Congress renamed the final legislation in Norwood’s memory as the Charlie W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act. What a wonderful legacy for a man who devoted himself to the needs of patients across the country.

Saving Lives and Money

The paired kidney donations legislation will save hundreds, even thousands, of lives. A study published in the Journal of Transplantation by Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology predicts there will be a 14 percent increase in the number of live kidney transplants performed each year. This comes at a time when an increase in the number of kidney transplants is critically needed. In 2004 alone, 3,823 listed patients died while awaiting a kidney. The average wait time on the list for a kidney is over four years.

The new law will also save American taxpayers millions of dollars. It is estimated to save $40 million in Medicare spending in the first year and $500 million over 10 years. That is because more kidney transplants mean less kidney dialysis paid for under Medicare, and more patients going back to work and getting on with their lives. For each patient who receives a kidney, Medicare will save $220,00 in dialysis costs.

A Triumph of Common Sense

Currently, an estimated 6,000 individuals nationwide have offered kidneys to family members and friends, only to have the donation rejected because they are not a match with the patient. Paired transplantation is a way to solve the dilemma faced by people who want to become living organ donors for a family member or friend, but are unable to do so because they are biologically incompatible with their loved ones.

Those 6,000 people represent a large and important pool of potential new donors. Of the 16,500 kidney transplants in 2005, only 6,500 were from living donors. So adding those individuals who are willing to be matched in paired kidney donations can make a big difference in the number of available organs.

Many hospitals, however, would not perform paired donations for fear of violating the National Organ Transplant Act. The controversy over paired organ donation began with an interpretation by the Department of Health and Human Services a decade ago stating paired donation may be in violation of the prohibition against “valuable consideration” – a clause which was intended to outlaw the buying or selling of transplantable human organs.

But Charlie Norwood simply would not accept the status quo. He said it was “hogwash” that “some folks were denied the chance to be crossmatched and, instead, their loved one suffered and even died while awaiting a transplant.” So Norwood set out to convince Congress that the law should make crystal clear that paired kidney donations were not only allowable but an important way to save thousands of lives by encouraging transplants that otherwise would not occur.

As Charlie Norwood put it to his colleagues in Congress, “Now, I’m just an old country dentist, but isn’t this just common sense?” Common sense, indeed – and not a moment too soon for thousands of Americans who will receive kidneys that otherwise would not have had the life-saving opportunity. We all owe a great debt of gratitude to the country dentist from Georgia.

John A. Schall, MPP, is the vice president at Jefferson Government Relations.