The University of Southern California and a nonprofit overseeing organ procurement in the U.S. endangered the lives of Black Americans with kidney disease by using race-based junk science to calculate organ-transplant wait times, a lawsuit alleges.
The federal lawsuit was filed June 13 in the Central District of California against defendants USC and the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). In the proposed class action, plaintiff Gregory Rowe alleges that a “race-based coefficient” that had been used by the defendants inflated the scores of Black patients on a measure of kidney function called the estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR.
The lawsuit argues that flawed medical studies showed Blacks had higher rates of creatinine extraction, so eGRF scores were inflated 16% to 18% to compensate for this biological situation.
“It was postulated by the developers of the eGFR test that Black Americans’ scores could be explained because Black Americans have more muscle mass and thus more creatinine in their systems than White Americans,” the complaint states.
Creatinine is defined as a waste product resulting from the digestion of protein. It is removed by the kidneys, but too much of it in the bloodstream can indicate kidney disease, according to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
The lawsuit contends that the race-based premise was flawed and that as a result of the use of this coefficient, Blacks accrued less waiting time on a national donor list and thus were less likely to get kidney transplants. Moreover, sound science did not support the use of the coefficient, according to the complaint.
“This, of course, is junk science supported only by racial stereotypes, and not any valid scientific studies,” the lawsuit states. “As described in an article titled ‘Systemic Kidney Transplant Inequities for Black Individuals: Examining the Contribution of Racialized Kidney Function Estimating Equations,’ the theory supporting the race-based modification to Black patients’ eGFR scores has ‘not been substantiated by rigorous scientific evidence.’”
The complaint alleges that USC in recent years has added 500 or more Black patients to the national kidney waiting list using the coefficient, which UNOS has since acknowledged is an unreliable biological marker or clinical measure.
A statement from USC defends the patient-care procedures used by the university.
“Keck Medicine of USC is committed to the highest standards of patient safety and compassionate, equitable care for all our patients,” the statement emailed to the Southern California Record says. “We are aware of the lawsuit and are reviewing it in detail.”
Although UNOS stopped using the race-based coefficient in 2022, not enough has been done to help Black patients who were penalized in the past due to the use of questionable scientific assumptions.
“Unfortunately, in the time between June of 2022 and January of 2024, tens of thousands of Black Americans were prejudiced in their candidacy for a donor kidney by use of erroneous wait time calculations, missing out on donor kidneys they rightfully should have been awarded, incurring significant economic losses, suffering from worsened kidney disease and, in some instances, dying,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiff and the proposed class of USC patients are seeking an injunction against discriminatory conduct, damages for economic injuries in excess of $5 million, statutory and punitive damages, and reasonable attorney fees and costs.