For more than a year, the government and the transplant community have
been battling over the ways donor organs should be distributed in the United
States. When the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its 210-page report in
July concluding that organs should be distributed over geographically larger
areas than is now practiced, both sides claimed vindication. (See related
story, "IOM: Distribute Organs Over Geographically
Larger Areas.") The final outcome of the argument, however, remains to
be seen.
Excerpted below are reactions to the IOM's report.
- "The transplant community should drop its resistance to Federal
regulations that could make the system more equitable for patients
everywhere."
— New York Times,
editorial, July 26, 1999
- "The study is finally over and the evidence in support of change is
increasingly compelling. But rather than respond responsibly, the United
Network for Organ Sharing continues to try to spin the results and sidestep
real reform by offering cosmetic alterations."
- "Transplant Recipients International Organization, Inc. overwhelmingly
supports the recommendations of the IOM study ... Transplantation should be a
system driven by patients, for patients, not for transplant centers or for any
other interest."
- "It is my hope that policymakers in Washington will recognize the
system is not broken and while there is always room for improvement, those
improvements that have the most potential for helping patients should come from
the transplant community."
— John Rabkin, MD, chief
of liver transplantation at Oregon Health Sciences University,
in a statement from the Patient Access to Transplantation Coalition, July 20,
1999
- "The report affirms what we have been saying for nearly a decade-that
the federal government needs to provide effective oversight to the national
transplant system, on behalf of patients and the general public. ...
Furthermore, the rhetoric put forth by the United Network for Organ Sharing and
others opposed to the regulation has been unmasked. The IOM has found no data
to suggest centers will close and donation will suffer should the Department of
Health and Human Services regulation go into effect."
— John J. Fung, MD, PhD, director of the University of
Pittsburgh's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute,
in a statement from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, July 20, 1999
www.upmc.edu/NewsBureau/newiom.htm
- "The Institute of Medicine has questioned the basic medical premises
of the pending federal organ transplant regulations. Therefore, the regulations
should be withdrawn. The Department of Health and Human Services should go back
to the drawing board with the transplant community and agree on new policies
that will benefit all patients."
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