Perhaps the only upside of America's opioid crisis is that more donor organs have become available.  Remarkably, though, kidneys from these cases are frequently declined by transplant candidates whose lives might be saved or greatly improved by accepting them.

In a STAT op-ed, UW Medicine kidney-transplant specialists Vanessa Weiland and Lena Sibulesky discuss this phenomenon and how education can play a role in reducing the stigma of organs that emerge from an overdose death.