In response to the severe shortage of organs from the dead for transplant, surgeons and desperate patients have increasingly turned to the living. But these living organ donations raise difficult ethical issues. Much media coverage of living donation involves happy stories of friends and family happily sacrificing to save a loved one. And many stories do have happy endings. But these decisions are rarely easy.
The Wall Street Journal set out to explore some of the more complex dynamics of living donation, and some of its controversial potential. We spend eight months with one family to see how a 25-year-old son dealt with the toughest decision of his life: whether to give half his liver to a father who, he felt, might not deserve it. We looked at the potential of kidney swaps, a new solution for people who have willing but medically incompatible donors. We profiled a surgeon with a radical idea: paying people to give a kidney.
The result: a complex portrait of both the potential and peril of these cutting-edge surgeries.