One might hope that people on a waiting list for an organ transplant were treated from top to bottom, individual by individual. It’s not that simple though. For The New York Times, Brian M. Rosenthal, Mark Hansen, and Jeremy White illustrate the complex reality of the queue.
The Times analyzed more than 500,000 transplants performed since 2004 and found that procurement organizations regularly ignore waiting lists even when distributing higher-quality organs. Last year, 37 percent of the kidneys allocated outside the normal process were scored as above-average. Other organs are not scored in the same way, but donor age is often used as a proxy for quality, and data shows there is little difference in the age of organs allocated normally compared with those that are not.
And while many people in the transplant community believe ignoring lists is reducing organ wastage, there is no evidence that is true, according to an unreleased report by a group of doctors and researchers asked by the transplant system last year to study the practice.
The animated transitions through an illustrated line of organ recipients drive the point home. Sometimes recipients are passed up because of risk factors, and sometimes the reasons seem less than ideal.
