Social media and organ donation: Ethically navigating the next frontier.

As the organ shortage continues to grow, the creation of social media communities by transplant hospitals and the public is rapidly expanding to increase the number of living donors. Social media communities are arranged in myriad ways and without standardization, raising concerns about transplant candidates' and potential donors' autonomy and quality of care. Social media communities magnify and modify extant ethical issues in deceased and living donation related to privacy, confidentiality, professionalism, and informed consent, and increase the potential for undue influence and coercion for potential donors and transplant candidates. Currently, no national ethical guidelines have been developed in the United States regarding the use of social media to foster organ transplantation. We provide an ethical framework to guide transplant stakeholders in using social media for public and patient communication about transplantation and living donation, and offer recommendations for transplant clinical practice and future research.

Between Scylla and Charybdis: charting an ethical course for research into financial incentives for living kidney donation.

New approaches to address the kidney scarcity in the United States are urgently needed. The greatest potential source of kidneys is from living donors. Proposals to offer financial incentives to increase living kidney donation rates remain highly controversial. Despite repeated calls for a pilot study to assess the impact of financial compensation on living kidney donation rates, many fear that financial incentives will exploit vulnerable individuals and cast the field of transplantation in a negative public light, ultimately reducing donation rates. This paper provides an ethical justification for conducting a pilot study of a federally regulated approach to providing financial incentives to living kidney donors, with the goal of assessing donors' perceptions.