Kidney Blogging Cont'd
Dick Cass, president of the Baltimore Ravens, donated a kidney to a friend from law school. The WaPost's Les Carpenter reports with remarkable matter-of-factness, reflecting Cass's own attitude:
"Maybe I'm intellectualizing this too much. But it's not a great risk," he said late last week as he sat in his office at the team's headquarters. "When you can do this for someone, it makes you feel good. It's really easy. It sounds silly, I know, to say that, but it's not that big a deal."
As a kidney donor, I agree completely. A kidney donation is a big deal to the recipient, but public perceptions drastically exaggerate what's involved for the donor. That not only discourages volunteers. It also warps public policy. As I noted in my AEI talk (large PDF of the PowerPoint here), many bioethicists have promulgated a faulty and patronizing series of assumptions, which shape organ-donation policy:
1) Normal people won't give up an organ except under coercion.
2) Anything that encourages a decision to donate is by definition coercion.
3) To avoid coercion, living donors should be discouraged.
I hope Cass's example inspires other donors, and that his attitude spreads.