GOD BLESS YOU, MR. KRAVINSKY

by TJ Johnston/PNN Community Journalist

Kurt Vonnegut would probably love to hear about Zell Kravinsky, an academic turned philanthropist from Pennsylvania. Kravinsky has heaped plaudits and scorn for donating his kidney to a total stranger. Earlier this year, Kravinsky, who has already given away millions derived from real estate, sneaked out of his house to a Philadelphia hospital to transplant his kidney to Donnell Reid, a poor African-American woman way down on the donor list.

Despite a lifetime of philanthropy, Kravinsky has been called a "selfish SOB" by a local journalist, deemed crazy by an AOL poll and his marriage is endangered as a result.

Kravinsky's history resembles that of Elliot Rosewater, Jr., the main character from Vonnegut's novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Elliot is the head of a multimillionaire dollar foundation. His generosity is misconstrued as insanity, especially by his family. A shyster lawyer gets himself retained by a distant Rosewater relative in order to declare Elliot incompetent.

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Because his wife, Emily is a psychiatrist, Kravinsky might have to fend a competency hearing. Yet for all the attention he has received, Kravinsky sees his in-kind donation as nothing unusual--and that's how it should be.

"America has grown so bizarre, it scorns self-sacrifice," Kravinsky tells me in a telephone interview. "In every other society in the Western world, it is expected where one would sacrifice himself so others would survive arduous conditions." He disregards the dichotomy of the AOL poll: he's neither generous nor mad, what he did was the least he could have done.

Giving a fully-functioning kidney is just a logical extension of a lifelong pattern. Kravinsky was raised in a socially-conscious household (he credits his father for instilling a strong sense of justice). At the age of 12, he picketed the city hall in Philly to build low-income housing. After grad school, Kravinsky taught emotionally disturbed children in the slums. Concurrently, he invested in properties. As his fortunes grew, he would live in the more run-down buildings and drive around in an old model Toyota. Eventually, he would upsize his living arrangements to a twin home and traded the Toyota to a minivan.

After losing his sister to cancer, Kravinsky devoted his resources to improving public health, locally and globally. He established an endowment in his sister's name to fund the Center of Disease Control and donated $30 million in real estate to Ohio State's public health school.

Still, Kravinsky felt he could give more. He saw the disparity of wealth manifesting itself in the health of the human body worldwide, citing Chagas disease, a parasitic infection prevalent in Latin America , as an example. Naturally, he's outraged. "I don't understand how others live well in the US and worldwide while others live poorly." He continues, "Rich people should be shamed to the point where decisions are made to let others die so that we may live in comfort. They are the repository of all human greed, the final effect of every decision we make."

Soon, the organ distribution system became the focus of Kravinsky's reform efforts. While the National Kidney Foundation has 59,255 Americans waiting for a new kidney (almost one third of whom are black), 3641 died in line. Then why should he enjoy two healthy kidneys while many struggle with one? He went to a hospital in North Philadelphia where most of their clients are poor African Americans. That population, according to Kravinsky, is "ill served by the dialysis companies. They allow them to persist in ignorance and rumors of the dangers of transplantation." The rejection rate of donated organs is merely five per cent and the mortality rate is just 1 in 4000. Also, one could register in not just one, but up to 20 transplant centers. That kind of info is withheld from would-be recipients while they languish near the bottom of the waiting list.

Little did Donnell Reid know that she was benefiting from Kravinsky's mission. She's obvious grateful that eight years of dialysis has come to an end. He considers Reid "a beautiful soul. She is my family."

Though it escapes his detractors why he went through all this, Kravinsky states, "I made an appropriate rational response to this remediable disparity. We could eliminate poverty globally if we chose to."

I asked Kravinsky if he ever read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. "No, maybe I'll read it."