[Willamin]

Great article! I'd never considered the mathematical risks associated with this.

Now I'm curious what the numbers would look like if it were a cultural norm for everyone (who passed the screening exam) to donate their kidneys in this non-directed fashion. My incredibly unscientific gut-feeling, back-of-the-napkin math seems like it would be plausible to reduce kidney failures to zero in no time: most people have two functioning kidneys and there are significantly less than 50% of people that need donated kidneys. Of course that gut-feeling math doesn't factor in the increase in risk for the donors (the radiation during screening, botched surgeries, etc), but those risks seem low enough that I imagine we'd net positive on a large scale.