More than 90% of renal transplants in Iran are from living unrelated donors: "Transactions between donors and recipients in Iran are mostly commercial - with financial conflicts occuring. The ineffective commercial transplantation programme has been against the interests of the Iranian kidney patients by eliminating the altruistic and related donor transplantation and preventing the establishment of a cadaveric programme," Javaad Zargooshi (Kermanshah/Iran) reports (in: W. Weimar et al. Organ Transplantation - Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects).
"In Iran, a commercial paid living unrelated donor renal transplantation programme started in 1988. The result is an inflated, stagnated market. According to dialysis patients there are many vendors, ´but we have no money. Haves obtain transplants and have-nots should bear the pain and finally die.
Before the advent of kidney buying and selling in this country, we had witnessed that the sister, brother, father and mother were discussing about who should give his/her kidney. Now, it is many years we have not seen those scenes.´ Family donation while kidneys are available for buying is interpreted as a sign of unwillingness to spend money. Also, since the dominant type of donation is the commercial one, ´the families of brain death persons worry that society will think, they sold the organs of their deceased relatives; this concern discourages brain death donation ...´"
Organ Transplantation: Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects. Towards a Common European Policy
Weimar, W.; Bos, M.A.; Busschbach, J.J. (Eds.)
