Donors call dibs on others' organs

LifeSharers wants its members to get first chance at fellow members' organs

ADVERTISEMENT

By Anita Powell

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Need a kidney? Are you willing to give up a lung?

That, in a nutshell, is the premise of LifeSharers, an organ-sharing community launched on the Internet in May 2002.

LifeSharers is a national nonprofit network of organ donors who may someday aspire to be organ receivers. The network currently boasts 836 members in 43 states, with 35 members in Texas. Six live in Austin.

The premise is simple: Members agree to donate organs when they die and give other members "first dibs." Membership is free. It's a way, says LifeSharers founder David J. Undis, of making organ donation quicker and fairer. Undis, 49, runs the Web site from his Nashville, Tenn., home.

"What I'm trying to do is solve the organ shortage," the former insurance salesman said. "If you think about it, it's one of the goofiest problems you've ever heard of. Six thousand Americans die every year while their neighbors are burying perfectly good organs."

Undis' wife, Laurie Undis, 42, is also a member of Lifesharers. So are the couple's three children. Minors enrolled by their parents can remove themselves from the list (or sign up to stay on it) when they turn 18, said Laurie Undis.

Undis said he stands to gain nothing from his nonprofit venture, other than a sense of satisfaction.

"This is my attempt to do something useful with the rest of my life," he said.

Laurie Undis said that her husband, who studied math in college, is the kind of person who thinks about society's big problems and how to solve them.

"He's just honestly a super-nice guy and he's trying to solve a problem," she said. "It might be just the first one on his list."

She echoed her husband's philosophy that if everyone were donors, more people in need of organs would get them.

"The LifeSharers philosophy is that no one should have to die on a waiting list for an organ," she said. "My heart just goes out to these families. I just can't imagine the waiting."

Undis' concept hasn't been put into practice yet because no one on the LifeSharers network has died. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 made it illegal to sell human organs or tissues. The law does not address a network such as LifeSharers.

But the network raises enough thorny questions to elicit concerns from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization that manages the database for those needing an organ. In an April statement, the group's ethics committee commended LifeSharers for encouraging organ donation but did not endorse it, saying it "essentially creates a class of 'LifeSharers members' for special consideration in organ allocation."

Laurie Undis disagreed, saying LifeSharers' focus is to help all of society.

"There may be a 50 percent advantage, that's true," she said, referring to the fact that all five LifeSharers members on the national waiting list can receive organs from anyone, but that LifeSharers members give first preference to fellow LifeSharers members. "But if a non-LifeSharers member dies and a LifeSharers member gets the organ anyway, at least no one died waiting, which is really the point."

Annie Moore, spokeswoman for the network, expressed other concerns.

"Those without Internet access do not have access to LifeSharers," she said. "A further concern is its accessibility to non-English speakers. It should be accessible to everyone."

Such arguments haven't convinced Ben Woosley, 19. The University of Texas electrical engineering student and self-described Libertarian joined LifeSharers because he feels that people should have the right to decide who their organs go to when they die.

"The biggest objection I've heard is that it creates two classes of people," he said. "But I think it's sort of ridiculous to think that someone who wouldn't do the same as a donor has a right to an organ."

Every day, approximately 17 people die waiting for an organ and 106 people are added to waiting lists, Moore said. Kidneys and livers are the most commonly transplanted organs. Currently, 82,009 people are on the network's national waiting list; 1,904 of them live in Central Texas.

In 2002, according to the network, there were 24,893 transplants; 130 were performed in Central Texas. Twenty-five of those donors came from the Austin area. Austin has a 65 percent consent rate for organ donation, higher than the national average of 50 percent to 55 percent, said Tony Ronquillo, spokesman for the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance, one of several regional procurement centers around the country that work with the national network.

LifeSharers' members get a donor card with information about LifeSharers, a letter to give to their doctor explaining their wishes, a similar letter for family members, and language for their durable power of attorney. Theoretically, that should allow workers at regional procurement centers -- who hurry to match fresh organs with patients in need -- to check for those listed on the national database who are LifeSharers members.

"The card we give to members instructs transplant personnel to get names of LifeSharers members (who are) on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list who need organs," Undis said. "We say, `Instead of giving it to the next person on your national list, give it to the first member on the LifeSharers list.' "

If no match is found within LifeSharers, the organs should go to the next person on the national database list. "The last thing we want is for our organs to go to waste," Undis said.

Ronquillo called LifeSharers, "a nice idea," but said the current system doesn't allow for its method of directed donation. That's because, under the organ donation system, if donors have not designated a recipient, the organs are given to people on the national database. Matching is based on the network's medical guidelines regarding blood and tissue type, medical urgency and time spent on the waiting list. Geographical location is also considered.

"If they give us a specific name, then we will make an effort to see if (the recipient) will accept the organ, but you can't say, `anyone on the LifeSharers list.' It's just too broad a list, and that's just criteria that we don't have on the national computer," Ronquillo said.

He encourages people interested in organ donation to get a donor card, alert family members and make written provisions.

"The (United Network for Organ Sharing) system is blind to race, color, creed and religion," he said.

Undis, who said he has no need for an organ himself, rejects such concerns.

"If we had a million members," he said, "that's a million new donors."

apowell@statesman.com; 445-3658