Is it time to pilot paying for organs?

Last year the BMJ’s news editor, Annabel Ferriman, had one of her kidneys removed so she could donate it to a friend. Her motivation? “I did it entirely voluntarily and have derived a great deal of satisfaction from it” (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a277). Is this altruistic act, and others like it, the answer to the growing gap between the demand for kidneys and the supply?

Ferriman’s experience was not all plain sailing. From the breezy offer at a party to the operation itself took nearly a year and a half, and although the outcome has been good for both donor and recipient she describes frustrations and delays that made her sometimes wonder why she had ever volunteered. …