CALGARY — Canadians are warming to the concept of “dollars for donors” — wooing potential organ donors with cash, tax breaks and other financial incentives — a Calgary researcher suggests.

The University of Calgary’s Dr. Braden Manns, co-author of a new study on the contentious topic, said the cash-for-kidneys idea should now be explored further to see if the promise of money could succeed where so-called “goodness of the heart” donations have failed to increase Canada’s stagnant organ donation rates.

The study, which consisted of a web survey of a sampling of Canadians, doctors and kidney disease patients, was published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Buying and selling organs and tissues is illegal, and the study enters some murky ethical territory, Manns notes. But Canadians appear to be willing to at least take a closer look at the idea to help boost donation rates.

“It’s a difficult subject to broach, but I think we could get over that,” said Manns, who specializes in treating kidney diseases and has seen patients die waiting for a new organ.

“We’re not talking about buying and selling organs in a hotel room in a shady area of Calgary. What we’re talking about is a third-party regulator that would offer compensation.”

Finding people willing to eventually part with their organs has been a struggle across Canada as donation rates stalled in the last few years.

The cash concept could particularly resonate in Alberta, which has some of the lowest organ donation rates in the country.

Manns says he’s seen the waits for a kidney from a deceased donor jump from just over two years to up to seven in little over a decade in Calgary.

That’s meant patients suffering from renal failure who can’t find a living donor end up dying on the wait list. Meanwhile, publicity campaigns urging people to sign their organ donation cards haven’t chipped away at the waits.

Besides coming to grips with the mental and physical hurdles associated with giving up an organ, live kidney donors must weigh the pain, time and risk associated with the necessary surgery, Manns said.

That’s where the cash could come in.

“Even with current system where we ask people to come forward out of the goodness of their heart, we are clearly not getting enough organs,” said Manns. “One incentive we know people generally respond to — they generally respond to financial incentives.”

Last fall, researchers administered a questionnaire to 2,004 Canadians, 339 health professionals, and 269 people affected by kidney disease.

The web survey found 70 per cent of respondents found financial incentives to be acceptable for deceased kidney donors, while 40 per cent agreed it was acceptable for those willing to give up one of their kidneys while still alive.

Reimbursement for funeral expenses for deceased donors and tax breaks for living donors were the most acceptable forms of incentives, the survey found.

Just 14 per cent of health professionals supported cash as an incentive for living donors.