The Zero-Sum Game of Opioid Deaths and Kidney Donations
Some news really make you feel like life is indeed a zero-sum game.
More people than ever could be helped in the United States in the previous two years due to an organ donation — which is a great development. Since 2015, all organ donations increased by roughly a third.
Taking a closer look, it’s kidney, but also liver donation that really increased over the last decade. The two organs are the most commonly donated, partly due to the fact that they can be provided by living and deceased donors. Taking an even closer look, it is actually mostly the dead that donated more kidneys and livers recently, bringing us to a terrible development — the opioid epidemic.
The curve representing deaths by drug overdose in the United States is pointing upwards in a conspicuously similar fashion over a conspicuously similar time period as that of organ donations. A paper published in the American Journal of Nephrology confirms the gristly connection. Those who died from drug overdose have donated 277 percent more kidneys in 2016 than they did in 2010. Between the same two years, drug overdoses in the U.S. rose by 66 percent. Almost all of the increase can be attributed to opioids.
The deceased being tragically younger and healthier than the average organ donor has led to their kidneys being remarkably better suited for transplantation. Or as the authors of the above-mentioned paper put it: “The opioid crisis in the United States has substantially altered the kidney donor pool.”
After a short breather in 2018, provisional figures suggest that deaths by drug overdose rose again in 2019 to more than 70,000. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, the data release has not been getting much attention. Neither have preliminary monthly reports suggesting that overdose deaths have been rising sharply since the pandemic started. In the twelve months ending July, they already exceeded 83,000 — suggesting more doom down the line and even more bittersweet final acts of kindness.
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