When her husband fell suddenly ill, Julie Krampitz did everything she could to get him a liver transplant – even if that meant undermining the country’s system for distributing donated organs. Using email blasts, a website, TV appearances, even a bilboard posted high above a Houston freeway, the couple was able to obtain a private liver donationin only four wekks. Meanwhile, across the country in Jacksonville, Florida, 26-year-old Devin Boots was near the top of the list for a liver; she waited patiently for more than four years for the system to work.
Like Todd Krampitz, patients in recent years have found a way to skip to the front of the line by securing their own donors, some of the using classifieds, online bulletin boards and hte new MatchingDonors.com, which for $295 a month posts personal ads for people seeking organs. By circumventing the official system, needy patients may be saving their own lives. But transplant experts worry that private solicitations will to an organ-procurement cottage industry, one that fvors the savvy over the sick, the rich over the poor. This feature examines the issue through the eyes of both Krampitz and Boots and asks an increasingly urgent question: Which of the more than 87,000 Americans waiting for an organ most deserves to live? And what can be done to increase the number of organs available to all so that desperate patients aren’t forced to compete for a chance at life?