Lee Wei Ling: Only fair to compensate living kidney donors

Only fair to compensate living kidney donors

I READ with amusement of the disquiet among some members of the medical community over the proposed amendment before Parliament to reimburse living kidney donors.

Most of those who are against financial compensation to living kidney donors are public-sector renal physicians and transplant surgeons. They argue that there are various medical and ethical issues for a donor to receive compensation, but I suspect the real reason is that they are more concerned about being treated as pariahs by international or American medical societies of their specialities.

Ethically, the Government's responsibility as a regulator is to protect the welfare of the donor. That must be the case for all donors, including altruistic ones, before the operations are allowed to take place.

In a study published in the New England Medical Journal on Jan 29, 225 kidney donors were followed up long term. The survival of kidney donors was similar to that of controls. Renal failure developed in 11 donors, a rate of 180 cases per million people per year, compared with a rate of 268 per million per year in the general population. Most donors had quality-of-life scores that were better than population norms.

Hence, we know that careful assessment of donor before harvesting the kidney will ensure that donor's health after removing one kidney will be no worse from that of normal people.

As the donor's health is not affected, how is it unethical for a living donor to be paid an adequate sum of money to go through the surgery to harvest the kidney - money which can be used to improve the standard of living of the donor and his family? How are we enhancing the well-being of kidney patients and donors by insisting on a less than adequate amount of compensation?

Professor Lee Wei Ling