Sound Off: Your comments 9/2/09

Editor's Note: The continued coverage of “Secret Harvest” (organs for sale) on last night’s AC360° drew additional response from many of you. We got a lot of feedback from transplant recipients or those awaiting transplants. Many offered both opinions and questions on the topic. Viewers also had much to say on the guilt/innocence of Nancy Garrido, wife of Phillip Garrido who is accused of the kidnapping and imprisonment of Jaycee Dugard. Here is some of what we heard, and we’d love to hear from you:

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As a person waiting for two years for a matching donor I can say I would most likely accept one anyway I could get it even if I had to sell everything I own to pay for it. Staring death in the face every day is no fun. People shouldn’t have to resort to illegal sales to be able to stay alive but if you are dying it doesn’t seem as wrong to do it.

If you spent years in an untenable situation and your existence was subject to 3 days out of every week on a dialysis machine and the other 4 days spent getting over the treatment, then you might understand why a patient in renal failure would go to such extremes to find a donor. I believe there are around 80,000 people on dialysis in the US every year and only several thousand donors come available for transplant. There's big business in dialysis which is probably why more is not done to increase transplantation. The government controls who gets the kidney. It's no longer who is the closest to the cadaver donor site for a kidney in the best condition, but how many years the recipient has been on the transplant list. Minimum time on a transplant list 5 years ago was 3 years – it's probably 4 by now. 4 years of helplessness. Don't let anyone tell you dialysis is a picnic in the park. Go spend some time at a facility and see for yourself. Please focus on the need for donors. My husband had 3 transplants. His donors were his brother (5 years), a cadaveric (20 years), and myself (4 years). My husband died from cancer likely caused by 30 years of taking immunosuppressant drugs, but he lived for 30 years to raise his family because of transplants. He only lived for 2 years on dialysis. Thank you.

Why didn't you show any positive stories of organ donation, legal or otherwise?!? We are talking about the gift of life here. Yes, I am waiting for that very gift. Unfortunately, even though I have health insurance and my husband and mother would like to donate – the bureaucracy and paperwork while I'm waiting is mind boggling! Dialysis is grueling and not a better option than a real kidney – as reported by that Ms. Hughes. Shouldn't you have had a Nephrologists commentate on her statement? I hope your future reporting on this subject highlights what’s wrong with the system in obtaining a kidney legally – it’s not easy.

It is outrageous to hear someone come to the defense of the couple Garrido. I think Anderson Cooper should keep us informed of the process so that the guilty do not go unpunished…

As a selectman in a small rural Maine town, I would like to comment on the sex offender program. We were the first town in Maine to put in an ordinance to keep offenders 1,000 feet from schools and daycare facilities. The State overturned our ordinance by lowering that amount of distance to 750 feet stating that these offenders have their civil rights. The reason that the Town put the ordinance in place was that we had an offender in town that raped a young girl and then left her for dead, living close to two of our schools. When you live in a rural community, 750 feet could be right next door to homes and facilities that have young children present. So, who has the most rights? Kids or sexual predators?????