Colorado man gets Web-arranged kidney transplant

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A 58-year-old Colorado man received a new kidney on Wednesday in the first transplant operation in the United States using an organ found on a private Web site, hospital officials said.

Bob Hickey’s operation to receive a kidney from Robert Smitty, 32, of Tennessee took about four hours.

Hickey and Smitty were ready for the operation on Monday when the surgeon refused to perform the transplant because Hickey found the donor on a Web site called MatchingDonors.com.

Hickey insisted that Smitty was donating his kidney out of the goodness of his heart and hospital officials finally agreed.

“He was glowing, he is a very altruistic young man and this meant a lot for him,” Patty Boyd, transplant director at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center, told reporters after the operation.

With 80,000 people on the list for an organ donation, there is growing pressure to bypass the United Network of Organ Sharing, which is the keeper of the list of those in need, and use private services such as the Massachusetts-based Web site instead.

After the hospital turned Hickey down, he went straight to the media with his story. By late Tuesday, the hospital reversed course.

But while the operation is finished, the debate over using a private Web site may have just begun.

MatchingDonors says it is a not-for-profit enterprise that uses all the money it receives to support its Web page. The site has about a dozen people seeking organ donations and has been running since January.

“I think MatchingDonors.com is trying to bypass the UNOS (official network) system. They’re also undermining the system because you can pay to get into a pool that is a lot smaller than the national list,” said Eric Trump, associate editor of the Hastings Center Report, which examines bioethical issues.

Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, medical director of the Web page, denies that MatchingDonors hurts the official organ-sharing network. He said Hickey’s donor had brought an extra organ to the equation rather than taken one away from the network.

About 80 percent of kidneys in transplant operations come from cadavers. But a relative or even a friend can donate one of two healthy kidneys to someone in need. 

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