Unofficial transcript of story broadcast on WB11 News @ 10 in New York on Sunday, April 30, 2003. 

JIM WATKINS (WB11 News @ 10 Anchor):  At this very moment, as we speak, thousands of people are in desperate need of organ transplants that could be the difference between life and death.

KAITY TONG (WB11 News @ 10 Anchor):  That’s right, but all too often patients don’t live long enough to get one.  Now apparently there’s a club hoping to change all that.  As you can see, Peter Thorne is here with us right now, and he has an exclusive report on this.

PETER THORNE (WB11 News @ 10 Weekend Anchor/Reporter):  A bit of a controversial club.  Right now the organ donation system gives priority to the sickest patients.  It seems logical, but one man thinks the system is a failure.  So he started a controversial club where members get “first dibs” on each others’ body parts.

Jesica Santillan’s story gripped the nation.  The Mexican teenager waited years for a heart/lung transplant, only to die in a botched operation.  On the day Jesica died, 16 other people died too.  Their names never made it into the headlines.  But like Jesica, they were desperate, in line for years waiting for a life-saving organ transplant.  And they died waiting.  More than 6,000 people a year dead because there aren’t enough organs to go around.  Now an unlikely pioneer says, “Enough.  The organ transplant system is broke.  Let’s fix it.”

DAVID UNDIS (LifeSharers Executive Director):  I used to be in the insurance business.  I retired a few years ago, and I was sitting around trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  I wanted to do something good for society.  I stumbled across this idea and got it started.

THORNE:  What David Undis got started is so revolutionary it got critics in an uproar.  A curious club called LifeSharers, available on-line, open membership, and no fees, but one major commitment.  Members agree when they die they’ll give each other “first dibs” on their organs.  In return, they get first pick of organs from other members.

The benefits of being a member of this group only kick in once people start dying.

UNDIS:  Absolutely.  We’re giving people another reason to donate their organs.  Doing it because it’s the right thing to do, or because it will help someone else, isn’t getting the job done.  The shortage gets worse every year.

THORNE:  Manhattan resident Barbara Canada-Davey signed up quick.

BARBARA CANADA-DAVEY (LifeSharers member):  I had a triple bypass.  The arteries in my heart were clogged.  I had to have the veins from my leg removed and put into my heart.  I came back close to realizing, after the surgery that I had, that I might have needed something like this.

THORNE:  Do you think LifeSharers will help increase your chances of getting an organ should you ever need one.

CANADA-DAVEY:  Yes.

THORNE:  Dave Undis argues 80% of people who get organ transplants did not sign up to be organ donors themselves.  He calls it blatantly unfair, upset that people who don’t donate their organs get treated better than people who do.

Are you saying that you should only be able to get what you’re willing to give?

UNDIS:  No, we’re not saying that at all.  What we are saying is that those who are willing to give should be served before those who aren’t willing to give 

CANADA-DAVEY:  Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. 

THORNE:  That’s sort of like a LifeSharers motto.

CANADA-DAVEY:  Yes.

THORNE:  Share and share alike.  It’s called directed donation, and it’s perfectly legal.  But some critics complain what LifeSharers does is circumvent the existing national system for organ allocation.  Up until now, whether or not you got an organ was based mostly on medical need, not your membership in a club, however easy that club is to join.  So in some quarters, there is strong dismay over what LifeSharers represents. 

Congress created UNOS.  That’s the United Network for Organ Sharing.  UNOS oversees organ transplants nationwide, and they don’t like LifeSharers at all, arguing “LifeSharers creates a special class of individuals and undermines the existing framework for organ allocation.  Although the current system is not perfect it’s based on objective medical criteria.” 

DR. MICHAEL SHAPIRO (Transplant surgeon):  These people want to increase organ donations.  That’s a good sentiment.  That’s a good goal.  We endorse that.  The issue is how they’re going about it.

THORNE:  Critics complain if LifeSharers isn’t stopped, someone at death’s door who is not a member could lose out on an organ to someone in much less critical condition but who is a member, leaving needy people to die. 

SHAPIRO:  Some of these folks are desperately ill and may die in the next week or days or hours, and we wouldn’t want anyone to die because folks were redirecting organs. 

THORNE:  At the heart of debate is the question, “What is fair?”  Dave Undis argues people who don’t donate organs get unfair access to the organs of people who do, convinced LifeSharers is an idea whose time has come.

UNDIS:  When we have a million members you’d be crazy not to join, because you’d be putting yourself behind a list of a million people if you ever needed an organ. 

THORNE:  And, Undis thinks, getting to a million members won’t be that hard.  All he needs is a pinch of publicity and a dash of death. 

UNDIS:  We need one member to die and have his organs be given to another member.  The publicity we’ll get from that will generate lots and lots of members. 

THORNE:  To some it might sound a little ghoulish, but LifeSharers members insist they just want to get more people to donate organs.  Right now 7,000 New Yorkers are waiting for transplants.  The shortage is critical.  The question is, “Is this the answer?”