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From: mhollowa@ccmail.sunysb.edu
Newsgroups: alt.fan.noam-chomsky,alt.folklore.urban,sci.skeptic
Subject: UNOS paper on organ theft myths
Date: 3 Jun 1994 20:46:40 GMT

This is the definitive statement on the veracity of the organ theft myths. If organ theft actually occurred, UNOS is the organization that would know about it. They say that it does not occur. Their records are open for inspection. They have a communications department who's job it is to deal with such nonsense. They'll be happy to provide you with what you need. Use it.

Mike Holloway
mhollowa@ccmail.sunysb.edu

                             ORGAN TRAFFICKING
                             PERSPECTIVE FROM UNOS

          Background
          UNOS Organ Center
          UNOS Scientific Registry
          UNOS Involvement with the issue
          UNOS and the Rumors
               US. Laws
               Medical and Logistical Considerations
               National Monitoring

For more information contact Wanda Bond, Director of Corporate Communications, UNOS, 1100 Boulders Pkwy., Suite 500, Richmond, VA 23225-8770, Phone: (804)330-8561, Fax:(804)330-8507

4/94

UNOS- Background

UNOS--the United Network for Organ Sharing - is a private not-for- profit organization that administers the National Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network under contract with, and oversight by the US.Department of Health and Human Services. UNOS is responsible for promoting, facilitating and scientifically advancing organ procurement and transplantation throughout the United States while administering a national organ allocation system based on scientific and medical factors and practices.

UNOS members include every transplant program, organ procurement organization and tissue typing laboratory in the United States. Policies governing the transplant community are developed by the UNOS membership and final approval is given by a 32-member board of directors. In accordance with its contract, UNOS has established organ sharing policies that increase the probability of a successful transplant. A formula for matching based upon objective medical criteria for each type of organ ensures equitable allocation of donated organs among patients medically qualified for a transplant. More than 34,000 individual names are currently registered on the national waiting list for an organ transplant.

UNOS Organ Center

The Organ Center facilitates essential coordination and communications activities between doctor hospitals and recipient transplant programs. For example, when a donor is identified, his or her transplant center contacts the Organ Center to give pertinent donor information. The Organ Center provides a list of potential recipients based on match and need, also taking into account medical urgency, genetic compatibility and logistics. Through using the UNOS computer, a recipient is located and prepared for surgery. Meanwhile an organ recovery team is transported to the donor hospital. The organs are removed, preserved and transported to the recipient center for transplant.

UNOS Scientific Registry

Every transplant center in the United States is actively involved in the UNOS Scientific Registry on Organ Transplantation. The Scientific Registry is a collection of data concerning all solid organ transplants taking place in the United States since October 1, 1987. As required by federal contract, the Scientific Registry provides data on kidney, heart, lung, heart-lung, pancreas, and liver transplantation. Trypes of data include treatement, clinical and sociodemographic factors as well as patient and graft outcome. Donor and recipient demographic information includes such factors as age race, sex and ABO blood group. Data is collected on recipients of both living and cadaveric donor organs. The Scientific Registry is believed to be the most comprehensive scientific data analysis system in the United States, enabling scientists to exchange new information vital to the progress in the field of transplantation.

UNOS Involvement with the Issue

For more than six years UNOS has worked with the US. government to monitor reports of alleged US involvement in illegal organ trafficing. Activities have included cooperation with the US Information Agency and appearances by UNOS officials on the USA satellite program, "WorldNet", which has been broadcast widely to Latin American audiences. Additionally UN0S has made continual efforts to educate members of the North American media by providing accurate information on organ allocation in the US and spokespersons for interviews. News crews have also been invited to tour UNOS corporate headquarters, located in Richmond, Virginia.

UNOS and the Rumors

UNOS has not been a direct victim of the illegal organ trafficking rumors, nor have those who have spread these malicious rumors produced any evidence of their own that organs are actually being imported into the United States illegally. UNOS believes these allegations began as part of a major disinformation campaign and have now simply taken on a life of their own. These bogus reports hurt not the U.S. government, though, but the 34,563 individuals in the United States waiting for a transplant who may not receive one because of the false rumors.

As administrator of the national transplantation system in the United States, UNOS is in perhaps the best position to outline why these allegaticons are not true. UNOS believes that such trafficking would be impossible to conduct without detection. The alleged activities would be abhorrent to the people of the United States and would quickly come to light and be stopped. An array of administrative, legal and medical protections assure that such illegal activity would be detected and punished. Those protections are described in the following.

US laws.

In 1984, the US government passed the National Organ Transplant Act (PL. 98-507), which outlaws the buying and selling of human organs. it is a criminal offense punishable by fine and imprisonment, to sell or purchase human organs for transplantation. Federal law has also created a national network for identifying, allocating and distributing organs thoughout the country (administered by UNOS); all organs procured and transplanted in this country are traced in this network from donation through transplantation. What has resulted is a tightly controlled system where it would be illegal, to retrieve or transplant human organs outside of this system.

Organ transplantation programs have also been the subject of numerous government reviews and investigations including the General Accounting Office, an auditing and oversight arm of the U S. Congress and the inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, a specialized investigative and law enforcement official who searches for irregularities in health and welfare programs. Any illicit activities would be uncovered in such an invegigation. Moreover, the US Department of Justice, and its investigative unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have looked into specific aliegations regarding illicit organ trafficking and have, to date, found them groundless.

It did not take an act of the U.S. Congress, however, to declare that the murder of another human being for his internal organs would be fully investigated and the perpetrator punished to the full extent of the laws of the United States.

Medical and Logistical Considerations

A "black market" organ trade could never in fact take place in the United States as organ procurement is a complex surgery that can only be performed successfully within a qualified and certified medical institution. A vast network of transplant personnel must work together to evaluate the organs before they are removed to ensure their viability, find suitable recipients, perform the surgery and preserve the organs. Organs derived under makeshift or secret operating facilities would never survive.

For medical and scientific reasons relating to the suitability of the organ and the likelihood of its success as a transplanted organ, the cause of death of the donor must be known to the physicians performing the transplant; organs obtained from uncertain or unknown sources would be rejected. The source of an organ could not be concealed from medical professionals performing the transplant surgery.

The United States has a careful death registration system that requires the reporting of every death and leads to investigation of any that might be cause by illegal action. U.S. hospitals are heavily regulated by state and federal laws and are required to maintain detailed medical and death records on each patient. State and local laws require review of any suspicious circumstances surrounding a hospital death. Any death regarded as suspicious triggers an autopsy rendering the organs useless.

National Monitoring.

International exchange or organs for transplantation is technically feasible but remains an uncommon procedure. Only after prior approval by UNOS may UN0S members enter into formal organ exchange arrangements with a foreign transplant program. All organ exchanges which take place under approved protocols must be promptly reported to the UNOS Organ Center. All imported organs are allocated according to UNOS policies. Under UNOS policy, importation of an organ for human transplantation in the United States is appropriate only if the foreign source is a UNOS recognized source. A UNOS recognized source is an organ transplant center or organ procurement program specifically authorized as a transplant center or organ procurement program by an appropriate agency of its national government. lf a UNOS member is contacted by a foreign source with an organ offer, that member must notify the UNOS Organ Center of that offer. Additionally, UNOS policy stipulates that no UNOS member will engage in practices which might discredit the transplant community. Organs accepted for importation must be from cadaveric donors and must have been voluntarily donated. Organs from living donors or for which compensation has been given are not acceptable for exchange by UNOS members.

Since the establishment of the UNOS Scientific Registry on Organ Transplantation on October 1, 1987, UNOS has maintained scrupulous medical records on organ donors and transplant recipients. According to UNOS records, there has been no documentation of any Latin American children becoming donors in the United States. These records are released to the U.S. government annually and subjected to both government and public scrutiny.