How We Crunched the Numbers on Kidney Donation
By Paul Berger April 20, 2015
Here’s how we arrived at our estimate that .
Last year, the United Network for Organ Sharing recorded 180 people who donated their kidney without specifying a recipient. UNOS does not include Renewal donors in this pool.
Instead, UNOS included Renewal’s donors among the 1,273 people who directed their kidney to an “unrelated” person. But the majority of donors in this group are friends, neighbors and work colleagues who have a personal relationship with their recipient.
Renewal says that 38 of its donors gave their kidney to a stranger in 2014.
To arrive at an estimate of Renewal’s impact, we added the organization’s 38 donors to UNOS’s 180 nondirected donors, making a total of 218 people who gave their kidney to a stranger last year. Renewal’s donors made up 17% of this group.
This method is by no means foolproof. It does not take into account other people who donated to strangers in 2014. That might include people who responded to social media campaigns or who responded to advertisements, such as those on MatchingDonors.com.
Renewal could argue that its donors are in a separate category from these donors.
Renewal donors know only the barest details of their recipients’ lives, often just the age, sex, family background and one or two other details. People who respond to publicity campaigns often know far more about the person to whom they are donating.
Nevertheless, given the fact that such people exist, Renewal’s share of donations to strangers nationally may actually be closer to 10%. But until UNOS creates a new way of categorizing people who donate their kidney to a stranger, the imprecise method we used for our story will have to do.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
