A few weeks ago, the Washington Post broke the dramatic medical news that as many as one third of all people waiting for an organ transplant are actually ineligible to receive one. Suggesting that the organ shortage is a manufactured crisis is misleading, write Sally Satel and Benjamin Hippen.

Strikingly, most patients who are designated by their physicians as ineligible for immediate transplant were once fit enough to receive an organ.

Tragically, they deteriorated during the years-long wait and became too sick to transplant. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), there are 98,517 people--transplant candidates--waiting for an organ. By summer, the queue will reach a daunting 100,000, with three quarters seeking kidneys. And the waiting time to renal transplantation is getting longer.

Today it is five to eight years in major cities and by 2010 it will be ten years for some patients. With about one in three waitlisted patients on dialysis not surviving beyond five years, the majority of candidates just don't have that kind of time.

This very trend is potent evidence why those who say the need is not so pressing are dead wrong. If the list had so many ineligible patients, then time-to-transplantation would be getting shorter not longer.