Levin: Organ Donation Bill Will Greatly Increase Organ Transplants and Save Many Lives

WASHINGTON – The Senate today approved a bill authored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that will make it easier for people in need of organ transplants to receive organs from compatible donors, eliminating a hurdle in decades-old legislation that has been interpreted in many cases to prohibit “paired” organ donation. The House of Representatives approved the bill – the Charles W. Norwood Living Organ Donation Act – earlier this week, and it will now be sent to President Bush to be signed into law.

“Paired organ donation has the potential to save thousands of lives,” Levin said. “It will significantly increase the number of kidneys and other organs available for transplantation, and it will make it possible for thousands of people who want to donate an organ to a loved one, but who are biologically incompatible, to still become living donors.”

Paired organ donation occurs when a willing organ donor is medically incompatible with their intended recipient, so the donor is paired with another person in need of a transplant who also has an incompatible donor. This cross-matching of compatible living donors and recipients can vastly increase the number of successful organ transplants and, accordingly, save many lives.

At issue is a provision in the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), which was enacted in 1984, that prohibits the sale or purchase of organs. Because paired donation did not exist at the time of the bill’s enactment, the bill’s ambiguous language has been interpreted in some instances to prohibit paired organ matches. Levin’s bill would clarify that NOTA provision to explicitly permit paired organ donation.

There are more than 97,000 people awaiting an organ transplant in the U.S.

On June 4, 2007, six members of the University of Michigan Transplant Team died in a plane crash while on an emergency mission to deliver organs to the University of Michigan Hospital for transplant patients. In his Senate floor statement, Levin said that this bill’s passage is a “fitting tribute” in honor of the team.

The bill is named after Rep. Charles Norwood, a longtime organ donation advocate, who died on Feb. 13, 2007.