What does a multi-millionaire have to do with kidney transplants?

[okarol]

I hadn't heard this story before:

Zell Kravinsky is an American investor and utilitarian who is most famous for making a non-directed kidney donation to a stranger, as well as donating the vast majority of his personal wealth to charity.

After Kravinsky learned that many African-Americans have difficulty obtaining kidneys from family members due to genetic factors, he sought out a hospital in Philadelphia that would allow him to donate one of his kidneys to a lower-income black person.

According to Peter Singer, writing in the New York Times, Kravinsky justified the donation mathematically when speaking to Singer's students, noting that the chances of dying as a result of the procedure would have been about 1 in 4,000. Kravinsky believed that, under the circumstances, "to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger", a ratio he termed "obscene".

That's from Wikipedia.

[xtrememoosetrax]

Oh yeah, there was an article about this guy in the New Yorker a year or two ago.  An interesting part of his story was that because he knew his wife would disapprove of his donating a kidney (I believe they had small children at the time), he had the surgery done without her knowledge.  She only found out afterwards -- I can't remember if it was from him or the news media -- and apparently was none too happy.  It would be interesting to know if they are still married . . . .

[goofynina]

God Bless this man and his heroic action 

[stauffenberg]

If the millionaire said he donated because, in view of the likely death of dialysis patients without a transplant, or their life being equivalent to death without a transplant, and his own risk of dying during transplant surgery being only one in 4000, then not donating would imply he valued his own life as 4000 times more important than the dialysis patient's life, then think of what that says about patient's who refuse to sign their donor cards to give a life-saving organ after they are dead!  They are saying that the intact status of their corpse -- for a few days, anyway, before the undertaker's formaldehyde wears off -- is worth more than a renal patient's life!  Or imagine the relatives who override the deceased donor's wishes!  For them the vague mental satisfaction of seeing Uncle Harry buried intact is worth more than your right to live!  But still worse, think of what this says about the governments which do little or nothing to require organ donation to save our lives!  They would spend billions of dollars and sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers to rescue 300,000 Americans imprisoned by some foreign power and subjected to the horrors of dialysis, but they are not willing to allow organ purchasing or compel organ donation, even from corpses, to save rescue the 300,000 Americans on dialysis!