FREAK-est Links
1. Will putting your organ donor status on Facebook encourage organ donation?
2. Economist humor: When a physicist meets an economist.
3. Will the UAE outlaw junk food in schools?
4. CNN releases 13 years of transcripts.
5. Why fiction might be good for you.
6. The 10 Commandments of Twitter: Academics Edition.
Some Links We Like
1. Can a company called Dwolla drastically reduce vendors’ credit-card fees? (HT: Anthony Farrell)
2. A potential “game-changer in the field of [organ] transplantation” — stem cells from the donor may replace anti-rejection drugs.
3. Teaching math in prison. (HT: Arts & Letters)
4. Writer’s block? New study on the best time of day to be creative.
Surprise: Money Still Beats Goodwill as Incentive for Organ Donors
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know we write a lot about organ donation and incentives. Like whether registered organ donors should get priority when it comes time to get in line themselves. Or whether the transplant market is too restrictive.
A recent Bloomberg column by Virginia Postrel highlights the difference between goodwill and cold hard cash as incentives to donate, not to mention the legal limits that exist to prevent transplants going to the highest bidder. Read More »
Pay to Play: Should Registered Organ Donors Get Priority as Recipients?
The organ donor waiting list in America is a long one. There’s far too much demand for a very limited supply. In 2010, 89,316 people were on the kidney transplant waiting list, while the number of living donors was only 6,282, and the number of deceased donor transplants was 10,622. Freakonomics is no stranger to the repugnant discussion of the organ market. America’s particular organ donation policies, however, aren’t practiced everywhere. Singapore and Israel give priority to potential recipients who were already registered donors. A new working paper written by Judd B. Kessler of Wharton, and Alvin E. Roth from Harvard further tests this idea of priority-to-participants in an incentivized game. Here’s the abstract: Read More »
How to Best Incentivize Organ Donations?
Organ donation is a familiar topic around here. Back in December, we discussed whether there should be a legal market for organs in a podcast episode called “You Say Repugnant, I Say… Lets Do it!” A few weeks ago, we blogged about whether the idea of a legal organ market is losing its stigma. So we were immediately intrigued by news that emerged earlier this month from China, about a 17-year-old boy who had sold his kidney for $3,392 to buy a new iPad 2. From the BBC:
The 17-year-old, identified only as Little Zheng, told a local TV station he had arranged the sale of the kidney over the internet. The story only came to light after the teenager’s mother became suspicious. The case highlights China’s black market in organ trafficking. A scarcity of organ donors has led to a flourishing trade.
The story turned out to be perfect fodder for Michele Goodwin, who has embarked on a three-part series on organ transplantation over at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Goodwin argues that the organ transplant market is far too restrictive, and makes the case for creating better incentives for organ donors in order to undercut the black market. Read More »
You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let’s Do It!
Some ideas are downright repugnant. Like … paying for human organs.
On the other hand, is it any less repugnant to let thousands of people die every year for want of a kidney that a lot of people might be willing to give up if they were able to be compensated? Read More »
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