Surgeon refuses to transplant kidney

The concept puts donors and recipients together online.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
DENVER -- A surgeon at a Denver hospital refused to perform a history-making kidney transplant, citing ethical concerns.
It left the recipient, Bob Hickey, devastated and angry.
"I'm just twisting in the wind; I've been in tears," said Hickey, 58, a psychologist and former health-care management executive.
Hickey was to become the first person to receive a kidney that he obtained from a stranger through an Internet donor site.
He already had his IVs in place and was in a hospital gown when one of the surgeons at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center told him the operation was off, he said.
He met his donor through a new Internet Web site, matchingdonors.com.
Rob Smitty, 32, of Chattanooga, Tenn., said he decided to donate the kidney because he always "wanted to do something real big in my life."
Usually, transplanted kidneys come from people who have just died. Among living donors, most are family or close friends of the recipient.
But with 80,000 Americans waiting for a kidney, two Massachusetts men put together the Web site, believing there were people out there willing to donate a kidney to a complete stranger.
Smitty and Hickey were the first pair to get approval and set a date for the transplant.
Some surgeons resist performing transplants on patients who've bypassed the long waiting list.