U.S. organ transplant system reportedly biased against Blacks

NEW YORK, April 12 (Xinhua) -- There is widespread agreement that the U.S. organ transplant system is racially inequitable, with Blacks three times as likely as Whites to suffer end-stage renal disease but much less likely to be put on the transplant wait list or to receive a kidney, reported The Washington Post early this week.

In a 2022 report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine cited research showing that Blacks are 37 percent less likely than Whites to be referred for transplant evaluation before they need dialysis; and that Blacks wait a median of 727 days for kidneys after they are placed on the waiting list, while Whites wait a median of 374 days.

Anthony Randall, an African American, last week sued an affiliate of the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, California, where he is listed as a transplant patient, and the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit organization that operates the U.S. transplant system, claiming that an algorithm used in determining priority for organs is biased against Black people.

Randall -- a Los Angeles barber who can no longer work because of kidney disease, receives dialysis treatments three times a week and has been waiting more than five years for a kidney -- also wants a federal court to allow him to represent a class of 27,500 Black U.S. patients, who he argues have been similarly disadvantaged.

"The bottom line for transplant patients is that about 104,000 people remain on the waiting list in the United States, most of them seeking kidneys. Depending on the calculation, 17 to 33 of them die each day waiting for kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts and other organs," according to the report.