A proposal for an anonymous living organ donation in Germany

In Germany, living organ donation of paired and usually not regenerating organs is restricted by law to related individuals, as well as persons who 'obviously entertain an especially intimate personal relationship'. When this law was adopted in 1997, the intention of the legislator was to guarantee the free will of the donor and to exclude any trade of organs. Since then the transplantation of cadaveric organs has not increased. Additional organs were donated from living donors. However, for a number of reasons only a limited array of transplantation centers use living organ donation as a supply facing a steadily increasing number of patients with chronic renal failure. Living organ donation raises a variety of medical, ethical and legal questions. Although transplantation is a generally accepted therapeutic approach for impaired organ function, doctors do not promote it actively. Prospective donor-recipient pairs use the information obtained via internet and other sources before they contact the clinician. Doctors are hesitant to operate a healthy individual for allowing her or him to profit from this organ loss only emotionally or in an altruistic sense. Often a complex relationship between donor and recipient, as well as tissue incompatibility (ABO, HLA) may be additional reasons to restrain from carrying out living organ transplantation. To improve the chances for good organ function and better life quality of the patients we here propose a model for anonymous living organ donation with special reference to kidney transplantation.