Organ Donation and Blacks

The past decade has witnessed an inexorable widening in the gap between the supply of organs for transplantation (i.e., the donors) and the need for organs on the part of desperately ill candidates for transplantation. As of June 1990, some 20,882 persons were waiting for organs to become available.1 Three patients on the waiting list die every day as a consequence of this shortage,1 and the scarcity of organs has become the chief limiting factor in clinical transplantation.2 In 1978 the Southeastern Organ Procurement Foundation asked us to identify obstacles to organ donation in the black population, and in particular . . .