The FAIR Foundation is dedicated to fair and equitable distributions of Nation Institutes of Health (NIH) research funds for all diseases, including the sixteen that kill more Americans than AIDS.

USA Today included this Op-Ed from the Chairman of the National Kidney Foundation that states strong opposition to financial incentives to increase organ donations.

USA Today's Editor disagreed in this “Our View” entitled “Organ donations fall short; financial incentives can help.”

The Executive Director of the Blog entitled “Organonmics” (http://blog.organomics.org/2006/06/26/rotten-fruit.aspx), John Heaney, wrote the following “Letter to the Editor” at USA Today and the FAIR Foundation's Founder also penned his thoughts to USA Today.

From John Heaney:

As the recipient of a life-saving kidney transplant, and as the director of an organization committed to the promotion of incentives to increase living organ donation, I applaud your editorial position encouraging the testing of incentives to address our nation’s critical shortage of transplantable organs.

The officers of the National Kidney Foundation and the United Network for Organ Sharing have admitted publicly that deceased organ donation will never satisfy the demand for life saving organs. In spite of their singularly focused efforts to secure organs from deceased donors, the transplant waiting list continues to add thousands of patients each year, many of them too ill to survive the five year wait for a transplant.

Living organ donation provides the most likely way to reduce and eventually eliminate the transplant waiting list. Recognizing that more than 66,000 dialysis patients face debilitating years of treatment and premature death while waiting for a transplant, the NKF’s institutional intransigence and refusal to consider ethically sound proposals to increase the number of living donors is, quite simply, monstrous.

John Heaney
Executive Director
Organomics
jheaney@organomics.org

From Richard Darling, DDS:

If a person died every 90 minutes in an emergency room every day of every year, would the hospital Director be publicly praising his staff’s successful policies? That is what the Chairman of the National Kidney Foundation, Charles Fruit, is doing when he applauds the present system of organ recoveries based on altruism alone. May I offer the understatement of the year: “Mr. Fruit lacks a sense of urgency.”

All 92,000 dying patients waiting for the “Gift of Life” give you a standing ovation for your editorial position endorsing the testing of incentives to address our nation’s critical shortage of transplantable organs.

As the recipient of three liver transplants and as the Director of an organization committed to the promotion of incentives to increase organ donation and the policy of Presumed Consent to boost organ recoveries, I also applaud you and would like your readers to know they can join with us in bringing this message to President Bush and their Congresspersons simply with a “click, copy and paste” by using this template letter endorsed by many eminent physicians and organ donor advocates: http://fairfoundation.org/organdonation/contactcongressfororgandonation.htm.

Richard Darling, DDS: National Public Citizen of the Year (NASW-03)
President and CEO: The FAIR Foundation (www.fairfoundation.org)
Founder: The Coachella Valley Hepatitis C, Liver Disease & Transplant Support Group
Board of Directors: United Organ Transplant Association
Author: Coma Life, an autobiographical memoir of life "within" coma and survival over hepatitis C, liver cancer, 3 liver transplants, heart attack, diabetes (www.comalife.org)
Address: 78629 Bougainvillea Drive, Palm Desert, CA 92211