ABA Family Legal Guide

Health-Care Law

Specific Issues in Health Care

Organ Donation

Who chooses the recipients?

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) keeps a national computer list of patients waiting for transplants. This list is used to match your organs with patients who might receive them through a transplant. Information about you, such as your blood type, is entered into the computer-match program. Possible recipients are listed according to the time they have been on the waiting list, their age, and their degree of compatibility with the characteristics of the donor's organs. Organs are offered to local patients first. If there is no patient locally that is a good match for the organ, the organ will be offered on a regional or a national level. When transplants first became an option, committees would receive personal information about patients such as their race, income, gender, family status, and job before making a decision. The UNOS computer-match program makes every effort to select patients regardless of their race, gender, religion, or other personal information.