Memphis City Council hears both sides of story in organ transplant debate

Commercial Appeal | Tesa Duvall
Memphis City Council members talked Tuesday about a change in the area's organ transplant policies, even though they have no say in the matter.

Kim Van Frank, executive director of the Mid-South Transplant Foundation, and Dr. James Eason, head of transplants at Methodist Hospital, each made their cases and made different requests of the council, but no action was taken.

Currently, Methodist accepts organ donations from all of Tennessee through two organ procurement organizations — the locally based Mid-South Transplant Foundation and the larger Nashville-based Tennessee Donor Services. A federal rule change would limit Memphis to the less-populous Mid-South Transplant Foundation service area for organ distribution that includes portions of West Tennessee, East Arkansas and North Mississippi.

The Mid-South area has about 2 million people and produced 62 donors in 2011. In comparison, Tennessee Donor Services has 5.5 million people in Central and Eastern Tennessee, plus parts of Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina. TDS had 220 donors in 2011.

The changes would go into effect at the end of the year.

Van Frank urged the council to remain neutral and make the public debate a thing of the past.

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