The Gosling Effect: How one man (and his liver) forever changed Canadian health

[Clark]

https://ottawacitizen.com/feature/the-gosling-effect

The Gosling Effect: How one man (and his liver) forever changed Canadian health care
In 2005, Kevin Gosling became the first living Canadian to anonymously donate an organ to a stranger. It set a cascade of kindness into motion.
Author of the article:
Elizabeth Payne


It was 5:30 a.m., still dark on an early spring morning in 2005, when Kevin Gosling and his wife Barbara walked across the parking lot toward Toronto General Hospital.

Gosling hadn’t slept well – he knew he wouldn’t – but he was too excited to be tired. This was the day he had been waiting for. He was about to donate his liver to a complete stranger.

It had been a long road for the then-46-year-old from Cornwall, Ont. For months, health officials wouldn’t take him seriously when he offered to donate the organ anonymously. We don’t do that here, he was told. Not only that, it had never been done before anywhere in Canada.

Some top officials in Canada’s leading liver transplant program were adamantly opposed to Gosling’s proposal. They said it was unethical and immoral. They questioned his motives, even his sanity. But Gosling persisted, so far as to undergo months of physical and psychological testing and preparation.

After more than a year and a half, everything was set to go.

As he and Barbara walked toward the hospital doors, Gosling noticed a small family – two adults and a child – heading to the nearby Hospital for Sick Children. It made him think of the child who would also be in surgery that day at the children’s hospital next door, waiting for Gosling’s liver to be delivered for transplant.

Gosling didn’t know much about the recipient. He only knew that it was a child.
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