U.S. hospital to allow Web-arranged transplant

DENVER, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A Denver hospital abruptly changed course on Tuesday and agreed to perform a kidney transplant that would be the first such procedure in the United States using an organ found on a private Web site.

Moments before the operation was to take place on Monday, the surgeon told patient Bob Hickey that he could not go forward because Hickey had identified the living kidney donor on MatchingDonors.com, a private service not endorsed by the U.S. government.

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Hickey, of Edwards, Colorado, paid $297 a month to be on the list.

Hickey accused the hospital of torturing him and said the surgeon, Dr. Igal Kam, was "accusing my donor and I of conspiring somehow for me to pay him under the table."

"It's absolutely not true. We've been totally above board," he told Reuters.

But by Tuesday evening, Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center said it would make a compassionate exception and allow the surgery to go forward on Wednesday morning.

If there are organs available, and they can be used to save lives, they should be used. Politics should have no part in this as long as organs are not bought or sold for profit, and they are not part of some underhand scheme. 80,000 people are on lists waiting for organ donations. Ask anyone of those people, and I can bet not one of them would care if it was goverment endorsed or not!