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עמוד:41
3 Read the following article and find out how Joyce Roush's donation of a kidney was different from most previous organ donations . The New Organ Donors Are Living Strangers ( from The New York Times , September 20 , 1999 ) As Joyce Roush checked in for her flight to Baltimore on September 6 , the ticket agent looked at her and said , "You ' re the lady who ' s giving a kidney to that little boy , aren ' t you ? " Yes , she was , Ms . Roush replied . "I ' m going to do the same thing , " the ticket agent said . It was just the kind of reaction that Ms . Roush , 45 , a nurse from Fort Wayne , Indiana , had hoped to inspire . The idea of a live person giving away an organ is not new . Last year , 4 , 017 living donors gave kidneys to relatives , friends , or acquaintances , providing 31 percent of the kidneys transplanted . And this year , almost 100 people have donated parts of their livers . Living donors have also been used for lung transplants . But Ms . Roush made her donation in a way that was almost unheard of . Last year , she approached Dr . Lloyd Ratner , a surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , and offered a kidney , not to a friend , or relative , but to any patient who needed it . That kind of "nondirected" donation , to a stranger picked by doctors from a transplant list , had never occurred before . The offer was accepted , and on September 7 . Dr . Ratner removed Ms . Roush ' s left kidney , and other surgeons transplanted it into Christopher Bieniek , a 1 3-year-old boy . The United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond , which coordinates transplants in the United States , has endorsed the use of strangers . However , the cases have also led doctors and medical ethicists to rethink their views about the amount of risk that society should permit people to take on behalfof others . "Formerly , we allowed only blood relatives to donate organs , " said Dr . Jeffrey Kahn , Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota . But then people were allowed to donate kidneys to their spouses and later to friends , coworkers and members oftheir communities . "This is just the next logical step , " Dr . Kahn said . "Why would somebody want to ? It seems not to be a reflective decision . But I think that's wrong . To do something for the benefit ofsomeone you'll never meet is a laudable thing . " But despite the need for organs , Dr . Kahn said , there are circumstances under which a healthy donor would be turned down . "If someone says , 'My kidney has to go to a white person , or a black person , ' what would we do ? " he asked . "We decided to say no , it has to go to the next person on the list . If they say , 'Then I won ' t give , ' we decided that we would forego the donation . "
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