Mark Yarborough of UCHSDenver on Record on Web Transplant

Well, we've blogged the heck out of the stupidest Internet health story of the year, the matchingdonors.com kidney transplant that was almost stopped by the hospital ethics committee, then was allowed, then stopped because of PR. Denver's bioethics director and transplant ethics scholar Mark Yarborough hits the issue on CBS.com, although we are still waiting for the story about how this happened in the first place. And how many people are sitting around waiting for a MatchingDonors.com "date." We do know now (from this piece) that MatchingDonors.com puts all its money into the "maintenance of the web site," which is a bit like a car dealership saying that all of the money it brings in goes to maintaining the car dealership...

organs.eBay.com (UPDATED AGAIN)

St. Luke's (Denver) ethics committee tried to stop the transplant of a kidney from one man, who paid $290 to post his profile on the Internet at a new website called MatchingDonors.com, to another. In a "compassionate exception" the hospital decided that this was an appropriate thing to do just this once, before they debate things. Precedent doesn't seem to be an issue for them. And the CEO of the hospital took great pains to say that it is not endorsing the website. Mr. Smitty, the donor, was to be paid $5,000 for his kidney ... I mean ... for his travel expenses. UPDATE: After innumerable stories reported on the phenomenon, hospital officials decided to cancel the transplant. Interestingly, George Annas uses the case as a (brilliant) opportunity to demonstrate that we would not have problems like this if organ procurement were both a higher priority and better executed. UPDATE2: Rocky Mountain News' piece is just out and interesting. Art Caplan is interviewed on it at Medscape. UPDATE3: A shakedown for life? UPDATE4: USA Today begins the spinning of the implications of the matchingdonors saga.