Living donor kidney donation in the United States: quo vadis?

After the first successful living donor kidney transplant between identical twins at Harvard in 1954, Joseph Murray, who received the Nobel prize, said of the recipient’s famed nephrologist ‘John Merrill and I had an understandable difference of opinion as to whether or not native kidneys (from healthy living donors) should be removed’ (1). In the subsequent 6 decades, the controversies over removing kidneys from healthy donors remain.