Web-aided transplant completed

''Sitting on a waiting list and hoping for a new kidney for so long, your attention is attracted to anything that might help you," Hickey, a 58-year-old former executive at a health maintenance organization, said a few hours before the operation.

The transplant had been scheduled for Monday, but doctors called it off at the last moment to look into whether either Hickey or Smitty stood to profit from the arrangement. Both men said no money changed hands for the organ, which would be a violation of federal law.

Ethicists said they still have serious concerns about MatchingDonors.com, based in Canton, and other organ donations between strangers.

There are no laws against soliciting an organ donation, and an increasing number of patients have turned to friends and family, or even casual acquaintances, for kidneys and pieces of liver.

By finding his own donor, Hickey bypassed the waiting list maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit group that works under government contract to allocate all organs donated from the dead. It doles out organs, in part, according to which patients need them the most.

The network does not oversee the increasing number of live donors, such as Smitty. Last year, there were 6,920 living donors compared with 6,457 dead ones.

University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan said the first ethical issue raised by Internet donations is financial.

MatchingDonors.com charges varying fees to post profiles of people looking for live organ donors.

The company says all its profits go to maintain the site, and they have no problem waiving their fees.

''If people can't afford it, we get them on it anyway," said Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, the medical director for MatchingDonors.com and a specialist in internal medicine.