The U.S. counted its millionth organ transplant on Friday, a milestone that comes at a critical time for Americans still desperately waiting for that chance at survival.
It took decades from the first success — a kidney in 1954 — to transplant 1 million organs, and officials can’t reveal if this latest was a kidney, too, or some other organ. But advocates opened a new campaign to speed the next million transplants by encouraging more people to register as organ donors.
Yet the nation’s transplant system is at a crossroads. More people than ever are getting new organs — a record 41,356 last year alone. At the same time, critics blast the system for policies and outright mistakes that waste organs and cost lives.
The anger boiled over last month in a Senate committee hearing where lawmakers blamed the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that holds a government contract to run the transplant system, for cumbersome organ-tracking and poor oversight.
“This is sitting on your hands while people die,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, told the organization’s chief executive as she and other senators suggested UNOS should be replaced.