May 16, 2001

Senator trying to cast Web on organ donors

Associated Press

NEW YORK—Sen. Charles Schumer, D., N.Y., has proposed the creation of a nationwide "organ donation registry" on the Internet to bring donors together with people needing organ transplants to survive.

Schumer said the United States is facing a serious shortage of available organs for transplant, with a waiting list of 75,000 would-be recipients and about 6,500 in New York state alone.

One difficulty, Schumer said yesterday, is finding potential donors and swiftly matching them up with those in need. A computerized national database could help to solve that problem, he said.

“Because so few states have registries, thousands of potential transplants never take place because the donor isn't identified in time,” Schumer said. He said his proposed bill in Congress “would help thousands of patients and donors instantly make a life-saving match.”

Schumer was joined at a news conference by a doctor who specializes in transplants, a would-be liver recipient and the brother of another who died waiting for a new liver.

The senator said his legislation would designate the Department of Health and Human Services to administer the database, which would include donor information already in ten existing state registries with new, regularly updated information from other sources.

Schumer said such a database also would make it easier for people to become organ donors, “which means more organs for the thousands of transplant patients waiting for someone to give them the gift of life.” Schumer added that donor participation would not be legally required by those on the registry.

The current national waiting list for organ transplants is almost four times that of a decade ago. Some 20,000 patients were seeking transplants in 1990, Schumer said. The numbers who died for want of a new organ went from 1,958 in 1990 to 6,125 in 1999, he added. © 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

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