Waiting for a kidney In the United States, 122,365 people are waiting for an organ donation; of these 100,218 are waiting for a kidney transplant. The list of transplants is so long that some patients wait up to 10 years to receive a kidney. These patients are waiting in pain for a kidney that they may never receive. An article by Barbara Mantel states that the most common reasons for kidney transplantation include: hypertension, diabetes mellitus, kidney stones, hereditary kidney diseases, and the inflammatory effects of drug treatment for other diseases. Records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that in 2012, there were 30 percent more deceased kidney donors than living donors. The difference between a living and deceased kidney donor makes a big difference. Explore transplant maintains that “a living donor transplant takes longer than a deceased donor transplant because the kidney is taken from a healthy patient, not a dead patient” (“Deceased and Living Donor, Explore transplant"). They also argue that living donor transplants last 15 to 20 years, while deceased donor transplants last 10 to 15 years. This may be the deciding factor in determining whether a patient will need another kidney transplant in the future. Statistics show that only 30 to 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as organ donors on their driver's license (Organ donor.gov), but what about the other millions of Americans who claim to have functioning kidneys ? This percentage of Americans leaves the decision in the hands of their family once they die. However, not all families allow their loved ones to donate their viable kidneys. This type of decision can end the life of another human being. To avoid this type of situation and ......middle of paper ......e 21 years old and are mentally stable are automatically included under HOTA (Chew). Those who do not want to be included in HOTA must opt ​​out before they are considered brain dead, after which doctors are legally allowed to remove all of their viable organs. However, everyone who opts out has lower priority on the transplant waiting list (Chew). This means that if they need a transplant, their name is automatically at the bottom of the list. The main goal of HOTA is to increase the number of organ donations. This law also allows payments to be made to living donors as reimbursements (Chew). Since this law came into effect, experts say that donation rates in Singapore have been very low (Chew). The National Organ Transplant estimates that between 2004 and last year, the number of kidney transplants fell from 269 to 123. This proves that HOTA has not been effective in stimulating organ donations...