Medicine: Information Bank

An organ bank from which surgeons could draw a kidney, a liver or a heart for transplantation when needed is still far off in the future, but an information bank from which surgeons may find out about organs as they become available is in the process of being established. Sponsor of the bank—or, more precisely, clearinghouse—is the Medic Alert Foundation. Started on a shoestring twelve years ago in Turlock, Calif., by Dr. Marion Collins, the organization has by now issued something like 200,000 identification bracelets and necklace tags to victims of diabetes, hemophilia, penicillin allergy and other conditions, to alert medical emergency teams to special dangers involved in their treatment.

For the same one-shot membership fee of $7, Medic Alert will now issue bracelets or pendants stating that the wearer has declared his desire to do nate his heart, kidneys or other organs. A doctor with a dying patient wearing such a tag will phone collect to Medic Alert headquarters (the switchboard never closes) to find out what organs the patient specified for donation. The doctor can also get the name of the next of kin—from whom, under most present state laws, permission must still be sought. It will stm be up to both the doctor and Medic Alert to inform transplant surgeons that an organ donor is available.