THE GREATEST ACT OF TZEDAKA - A LIFESAVING KIDNEY DONATION

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http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/49949/

THE GREATEST ACT OF TZEDAKA - A LIFESAVING KIDNEY DONATION
Yaakov Kornreich

What was the biggest single donation to Tzedaka (charity) or greatest act of Chesed (personal kindness) in your life? How much of a difference did it really make? Did it change a life? Did it save a life? How do you know for sure?
 
            Contributions to the most noble of causes do not usually go entirely to the advertised purpose. Even when we give Tzedaka to poor people face to face, whom we encounter in the street, or who come knocking at our door, we cannot be sure what they will spend it on.
 
            Even if we invited them into our home and gave them something to eat, we know that after eating from our table, they were no longer hungry, but what will happen the next day, when they will be hungry again, and we will not be there to feed them?
 
            But there is a way to give a gift of Tzedaka that keeps on giving for many years. We can give someone in end-stage renal failure one of our healthy kidneys to carry out the vital functions that his own kidneys can no longer perform.
 
            Medical science has made major strides in treating people with end stage renal disease (ESRD). Periodic dialysis can filter the poisons and waste products out of their blood, prolonging their lives. But ultimately, the only effective replacement for two failed human kidneys is another healthy human kidney.

            Fortunately, our marvelous bodies can survive quite nicely with just one normally functioning kidney, while each one of us was born with two of them, including a built-in spare.  Healthy people never really need their second kidney, while for someone with ESRD, its donation literally means the difference between life and death. On average, a patient in end-stage renal failure will live 10 to 15 years longer with a kidney transplant than if they remain on dialysis. Younger transplant recipients enjoy an even longer extension of their life expectancy. Two U.S. teenagers who were among the earliest kidney transplant recipients in 1966 and 1967 are both alive and well today.
 
            Live donor kidney transplantation is often (but not always) an exception to the rule in Halacha which forbids mutilation of our bodies because of their inherent holiness, having been created "b'tzelem elokim," in the image of G-d. In cases of ESRD, we are dealing with "pikuach nefesh," saving a life, which, in Jewish law, is often considered to be a compelling reason to permit a normally forbidden act.

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