There is a controversy raging in US the transplant world right now over which patients receive scarce organs. The Health and Human Services Dept. issued regulations in March requiring nationwide standards for allocating organs based on medical need to ensure " a level playing field" for patients, no matter where they are treated. But several states and transplant centers have taken legal action to keep the old system, in which organs are allocated by regions and individual hospitals have their own criteria to determine which patients get priority.