Wait-Listed to Death - Improving incentives for organ donations.

Wall Street Journal ^ | Dec 17, 2008 | Masthead Editorial

[neverdem]

The United States recently passed a tragic milestone. For the first time, there are more than 100,000 Americans waiting for an organ transplant. If recent history is any guide, more than 6,000 of them will die waiting this year.

The outrage is that the federal government makes it extremely difficult to find a donor. A law to prevent the buying and selling of organs has had the unintended consequence of discouraging almost all incentives to donate, including state tax deductions. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) is trying to convince his Senate colleagues to pass a life-saving rewrite.

It wasn't supposed to be this way when Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, sponsored by then-Senator Al Gore. As federal laws go, this one isn't our favorite, creating as it did a national bureaucracy to allocate donated livers, kidneys, hearts and other organs. But Senator Gore correctly stated at the time that if voluntary efforts failed to provide enough organs to save patients, then incentives should be created to encourage donation.

The problem occurred when Congress added a provision subjecting donors and patients to criminal penalties of up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine if "valuable consideration" was provided to a donor. Members wanted to prevent for-profit businesses from paying poor people in the Third World to give up their livers for rich American patients. But since "valuable consideration" carries the threat of jail time, it has encouraged everyone involved to make an overly broad interpretation.

After Pennsylvania passed a pilot program in 1994 to pay burial expenses for organ donors, state employees refused to implement the law for fear of federal prosecution...

[JRandomFreeper]

The problem occurred when Congress

There's the meat of it.

/johnny

[SeeSharp]

Here's a lecture on the subject of organ donations given at the Mises Institute: On the Ethics of Paying Organ Donors: An Economics Perspective .

[sionnsar]

Members wanted to prevent for-profit businesses from paying poor people in the Third World to give up their livers for rich American patients.

Livers????

[sionnsar]

"The problem occurred when Congress"
There's the meat of it.

But don't worry. Congress knows how to make cars.

[JRandomFreeper]

They were thinking Kennedy..... Honest mistake....

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

Congress knows how to make cars.

Mmmmhmmm. And pi=3.0

There isn't anything one person can screw up that a congress assembled can't make worse.

/johnny

[Bobibutu]

http://www.lifesharers.org/

Welcome to LifeSharers

If you ever need an organ for a transplant operation, chances are you will die before you get one. You can improve your odds by joining LifeSharers. Membership is free.

[Bushwacker777]

We could hurry through exections for every inmate on death row and have a bunch of organs ready for transplant tomorrow.

[neverdem]

Livers????

I would assume a lobe of the liver, but in the third world I wouldn't be surprised at anything.

A retrospective review was performed of Doppler sonographic studies and angiograms in 94 liver transplant cases (72 whole liver, 22 lobar) with suspected vascular obstruction.

Whole livers come from terminal or dead trauma patients in the civilized world.

[neverdem]

Thanks for the link.

[raybbr]

Everyone else makes money off of a transplant operation why shouldn’t the donor or his family?