Web site links organ donors to patients

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Web site links organ donors to patients

By Eva Wolchover  |   Sunday, February 10, 2008
http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage


A routine stomach surgery gone terribly wrong in 2005 left Edson Rafferty of Canton in dire need of a new kidney.

Like the more than 70,000 other patients in the United States waiting for kidney transplants, his name has since sat essentially motionless on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list.

An overwhelming shortage in organs means the 65-year-old may have to wait up to 10 years for a kidney through UNOS. The network is a federally managed system for ensuring that donated organs are allocated based on length of wait, health, compatibility and other objective criteria. In addition to the 70,000 kidney patients on the list, 30,000 people await other organs.

Unsure whether his body could endure painful, thrice-weekly sessions of dialysis, Rafferty worried he’d die waiting his turn. Waits can last from four to seven years.

But in June of 2007 he came across matchingdonors.com, a Canton-based Web site launched in 2004 that matches patients with potential organ donors.

The site, founded by Canton businessman Paul Dooley and his Boston doctor, Jeremiah Lowney, serves only as a means for patients to meet donors, with screening, testing and transplant surgeries performed at transplant centers.

Patients pay several hundred dollars to join the site, and in some cases the fee is waived. No money is exchanged between patients and donors, which would be a federal crime. In addition to kidney donation, the site serves patients in need of pancreas, liver, lung, bone marrow and intestinal donations.

“I needed a kidney for almost two years before I found out” about matchingdonors.com, said Rafferty, a lawyer who before experiencing kidney failure ran a civil litigation practice out of Boston.

Within days of setting up his profile, which includes contact details, photographs and a heartbreaking appeal to potential donors, Rafferty began getting phone calls from people around the world offering to donate kidneys for altruistic reasons.

“These people are amazing,” said Rafferty. “When they contacted me they said they saw my profile and were so moved by it that they wanted to donate.”

Rafferty had several false starts with potential donors, and has had to put his search on hold while he completes a six-month dose of Coumidin, a blood thinner. With only two months of the medication to go, he has begun the first stages of looking for a donor again and is confident it won’t take long.

“I got a call from a woman in Chicago who asked if I would be willing to let her donate a kidney,” he said. “She said (my profile) just touched her heart so much. Her mother died while on dialysis while waiting for a kidney.”

Web site co-founder Paul Dooley, who also founded collegejobboard.com, created the site after losing his father to cancer. The elder Dooley, who needed a new kidney, was rejected from the UNOS list, he said, and died while waiting for an organ replacement.

“I thought we could take the same code we use for our college and professional job board to see if we can match people who need organs with people who want to donate organs,” Dooley said. “We thought, if it doesn’t work we’ll shut it down, and if it does work we’ll save some people.”

Dooley approached Lowney, his internist in Boston, with the idea, and together they searched the Web for data to aid the project. They learned that a National Kidney Foundation survey conducted in 2000 found that of 1,000 people asked, 25 percent would consider donating a live organ to a stranger.

“Initally there was a lot of skepticism about what we were doing,” Dooley said. “But it has became more and more acceptable, and now we have hospitals referring patients to us.”

Since its launching in late 2004, the site has initiated 67 successful surgeries, with more than 300 patients awaiting donation from roughly 4,600 potential donors.

“The people that contact me, that want to donate their kidneys, are unbelievable, they’ll do it totally altruistically just because they saw my profile,” Rafferty said.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1072495