Rachel Bennett Steury has asked me to mention her
recently released memoir Losing My Kidney and Finding My Voice: Confessions of a Living Donor. Rachel reveals insights from television celebrities Katie Couric, Oprah Winfrey, and her own grandmother, which prompted her to continue the family legacy of donation that began with her uncle, a beloved deceased donor. She explores her family’s history with grief and suicide, and how it influenced her decision to put her kidney on a plane to Pennsylvania without her. Rachel’s family expanded to include the organ donation community, which was activated all across the country to engage, motivate, and inspire their neighbors through the simple but impactful act of storytelling. Visit the author's website for more information www.bennettsteury.com/memoir or email her at rachel@bennettsteury.com Rachel's Memoir Available Now

Frank’s comments: I am always happy to praise and encourage such individual acts of generosity and love, because saving a person’s life is a big deal. It is a very big deal! However, we should never forget that the problem of suffering and death from the kidney shortage (to which this newsletter is dedicated) is much larger than can be dealt with by these individual acts of heroism. My co-authors and I estimate that each year the kidney shortage is causing more than 40,000 U.S. kidney failure patients to suffer on dialysis and die prematurely. And since 1988 (when the necessary data first became available), an astonishing 1.3 million U.S. kidney failure patients have so suffered. To end the kidney shortage and save all of these lives, we estimate the government would have to offer living kidney donors compensation of about $100,000 (in 2026 dollars). For a succinct version of our argument, see my 15-minute presentation: McCormick F, “The Government Could Save More than 40,000 Kidney Failure Patients from Premature Death Each Year by Compensating Living Kidney Donors” video presentation at the University of Chicago hosted Symposium on "The Future of Living Donor Kidney Transplantation," May 7, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfoTwgsLVMY&list=PLr3ivtn-IcXRHsaq_LYS1OMD27ep-oAGM&index=5&t=1737s

For a much longer version of the argument, with detailed calculations, see: McCormick F, Held PJ, Chertow GM, Peters TG, Roberts JP. Projecting the Economic Impact of Compensating Living Kidney Donors in the United States: Cost-Benefit Analysis Demonstrates Substantial Patient and Societal Gains. Value in Health, 2022-12-01, Volume 25, Issue 12, Pages 2028-2033.

At the moment, a proposed bill, “The End Kidney Deaths Act” is being considered in Congress, which would be a very important first step in the needed direction of compensating kidney donors.