Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, medical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at UCLA, said the issue of foreigners coming to the U.S. for transplants deserves scrutiny.
Credit: Fox 8 New Orleans

Earlier this fall, a leader of the busiest hospital for organ transplants in New York state — where livers are particularly scarce — pleaded for fairer treatment for ailing New Yorkers.

“Patients in equal need of a liver transplant should not have to wait and suffer differently because of the U.S. state where they reside,” wrote Dr. Herbert Pardes, former chief executive and now executive vice president of the board at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

But Pardes left out his hospital’s own contribution to the shortage: From 2013 to 2016, it gave 20 livers to foreign nationals who came to the United States solely for a transplant — essentially exporting the organs and removing them from the pool available to New Yorkers.

That represented 5.2 percent of the hospital’s liver transplants during that time, one of the highest ratios in the country.

Little known to the […]