Our community should take note of people like Mr. Doug Robertson, who donated a kidney to a stranger in June. In addition to feeling pride, perhaps more importantly we should also respond with an attitude of protection toward living organ donors, and construct a critical analysis of the needs of organ donors both short- and long-term.

In 2008, the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network convened the national Living Donor Data Task Force, of which I was a member, to address needs related to data collection on donors.

We concluded:

"As currently collected, the OPTN data are incomplete beyond the point when the discharge form is submitted (up to six weeks post donation) and therefore data collected beyond these time points are useless for research or making conclusions about living donor safety."

In addition, there was also considerable concern that funded research on living organ donation is not generalizable to all living organ donors because the research has occurred at only a small number of transplant centers and each center in the country is allowed to define its own parameters of practice. The lack of high quality OPTN data should concern all of us who praise living organ donors and honor their benevolence.

Mr. Robertson and others like him deserve that: (a) living organ donors are given scrupulous protection through meaningful informed consent (i.e., they understand all of the short- and long-term risk factors of donation); (b) a national registry of living organ donors be established for comprehensive data collection operated independently from transplant surgeons and transplant centers; (c) all living donors have access to funded and specialized health care for direct or remote consequences of the donation within their home communities and for the rest of their lives.

Mr. Robertson donated at a highly acclaimed transplant center. My comments are not based upon personal knowledge of the practices at this particular center but are meant to raise public awareness about serious issues related to the practice of live organ transplantation in the United States.