Most kidney disease strikes both kidneys simultaneously, so having only 1 kidney does not make one more prone to need a kidney, besides traumatic injuries to the remaining kidney. Nevertheless, in America, in case a kidney donor should later require a kidney themselves, priority is given for them for a transplant. Consequently, donating a kidney actually IMPROVES your protection against dying from kidney failure.

Some friends and I started learning these details about 10 years ago. It wasn't long before several of us were thinking seriously about donating a kidney to a person who needed it. There clearly was almost a race to see who might be first. We now recognize that this is simply not unusual, that usually family members have a similar competition to be able to be able to save the life of a loved one. And others who have donated to strangers have said that they felt the exact same keen want to be accepted as a donor, since they felt, like us, so it would be a great experience a cancerous gene.

I now have significantly more than twenty friends who have donated a kidney to a stranger, and this chain reaction has attracted lots of media interest. Articles and documentaries have been made by the print media and the electronic media in Australia, England, and America, on which we have done, and, aside from several positive reports in local newspapers, they've all been surprisingly negative.

The reporters each claimed to be wanting to write something nice about organ donations, yet, 1 by 1, both stabbed us in the back. We, understandably, reacted angrily each time. But now we are beginning to observe how their reports are very a natural reaction, and probably section of an essential evolution regarding live organ donations... and especially non-directed live organ donations. We're also seeing how this reaction is not terribly distinctive from what a number of other undirected organ donors have noticed, from the media, the general public, government bodies, and sometimes even friends and relatives.