Live kidney donation via twitter and other social networking sites

For many years the transplant community was very uneasy about solicitation of live kidney donors, but that seems to be changing. Web sites like MatchingDonors.com have achieved much more widespread acceptance (and they have in turn started to integrate themselves with kidney exchange programs).


Arthur Matas, the Director of Renal Transplant at U. Minnesota, has a blog post on Kidney donation via Twitter. Here's a newspaper article that follows the story: Kidney Transplant A Success Among Cyber Friends.


Social network sites may be just the sort of thing needed to help people let their friends know that they need a kidney, without putting any particular friend on the spot with a direct request.