by Zachary Hendrickson

Posted: March 25, 2013

On Wednesday March 20th, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, passed a bill that could potentially lead to the end of the ban on HIV-positive organ donation. The HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act was introduced on National Donor Day this past February by Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) with strong bipartisan support. The HOPE Act aims to overturn the 1988 amendment to the National Organ Donation Act, which also outlaws any research into HIV-positive organ donation.

Coburn, who was a doctor before entering politics, said that our scientific understanding of HIV/AIDS has grown to a point where the current restrictions on HIV-positive organ donation no longer make sense. According to a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation, lifting the 1988 ban would open up thousands of HIV-positive organs for transplantation each year. The director of the CDC’s Office of Blood, Organ and Other Tissue Safety, Dr. Matthew Kuehnert, expressed his support for the bill when he made this statement to the New York Times, “We would like to see as many safe transplants occurring as possible, and there’s no reason why H.I.V.-positive recipients shouldn’t get transplants and that H.I.V.-positive donors can’t be used.”

(Huffington Post by Meredith Bennet-Smith http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/senate-committee-passes-bill-end-ban-hiv-organ-donation_n_2936415.html)