OK, we're going to deal with some realities here - no intent to be harsh, but this request, because of its extremely serious nature, needs some pespective. Don't know if the friend's brother is on Hemo or PD for a dialysis regimen (the brother should look into Peritoneal Dialysis if he's going to a dialysis center 3 times a week; PD is done at home over night while he sleeps and is therefore much less tiring and life disrupting, plus it is relatively easy to take on the road). At any rate, he can continue on dialysis for the foreseeable future, so there is not anything immediately life threatening here as far as the kidney failure is concerned; if there was, the brother wouldn't be a candidate for a transplant, immediate or otherwise. Obviously, the brother has made the decision to have a transplant, which, when he gets it, will be a major lifestyle change ( for most people most of it for the better, but not all of it - he'll spend the rest of his life on several medications, some due to the transplant and the fact that it results in an essentially crippled immune system for the rest of his life). Since, as bad as dialysis is, he can continue on the transplant list until one becomes available, the pressure from the father and the brother to donate a kidney is, essentially, a (completely legal) way to short circuit the waiting period for the transplant (that period seems to run in the 18 month to 36 month time frame at present, though sometimes a few months less). And kidney transplants are about the oldest and most common of major organ transplants; there is a list of desirable conditions to be met for a kidney transplant, but it is amazing how few of them are manditory for a successful outcome with a kidney transplant. Only the original poster's friend knows the total medical situation and why this request is being made in the manner it is being made, but given the high percentage of success of this transplant and the (relative to other organs; we're not trying to minimize the seriousness of the situation here) relative ease of locating a suitable doner organ, there appears to be an element of emotional blackmail here, as the only thing this request will change is how soon the brother gets a doner kidney unless there is a really odd genetic situation here, which doesn't usually happen with kidney doners. Based only on the information we have been given, either the brother or the father need to be more forthcoming as to why this has to happen now with a relative's kidney as opposed to 12 to 36 months from now with a doner kidney from the "normal" circuit, or the potential donor brother has every right to feel a lot less guilty than the sick brother and the father seem to want him to feel. There is not a life and death situation here (based soley on what we have been told in this thread), it is a matter of the desires of the brother with kidney failure to take the quickest way up the transplant path. I'm sorry if this analysis seems harsh, but given only the facts OP has given us, and my unfortunate familiarty with kidney failure situations, this is an accurate description.