Getting More Organs for Transplantation.

The United States and most other nations suffer from a shortage of human organs for transplant. In the United States, over 120,000 people are on waiting lists for organ transplant and every year over 10,000 people die while waiting (Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network). There are a number of fronts on which research has made progress to address this shortage, but there is still significant work to be done. We describe how organs are acquired and allocated, strategies that have been implemented to increase the number or organ donations for transplantation from living donors, and work we are conducting to understand how we can recover more organs from deceased donors. For example, how organs are allocated can moderate their scarcity, not just through efficiencies in allocation but also through changes in donor behavior. We will describe a market design being explored in Israel to increase organ donor registration by providing priority on organ waiting lists for individuals who previously registered as organ donors. We will also report results that raise concern over policies that have recently been implemented in the United Kingdom and several US states, namely changing the way the organ registration question is asked to a “mandated choice” frame. Organs for transplant can be recovered from living donors and deceased donors. Living donors give an organ while alive. Living donation of kidneys, which represented 96 percent of all US living organ donations in 2012 (OPTN), is possible since humans have two kidneys but can live a healthy life with only one, allowing the other to be removed and donated. Getting More Organs for Transplantation †