Organ Donation Supply and Demand
My wife is helping with a local drive to get people to register to donate organs. We thought that, as a cancer survivor, she herself would not be allowed to register. Wrong. Anyone under age 85 can register, so long as their cancer is not active and they do not have a systemic infection of any kind.
The doctor who informed us says this increases the potential supply of transplantable organs. If the demand is high enough, and the patients sick enough, the doctors will choose to use a donated organ even if the transplantation risk from the particular organ is substantial. Thus, while fortunately the price system is not used explicitly in the transplantable organ market, the choice to allow more people to register and to compare the demand to the increased supply suggests economics is currently present in this market.
Helmetless Motorcyclist Killed While Riding to Overturn Helmet Law
From the (Syracuse) Post-Standard:
A Parish man who was participating in a motorcycle helmet protest ride was killed this afternoon when he went over the handlebars of his motorcycle and injured his head on the pavement, state police said.
Philip A. Contos, 55, of 45 East St., Parish, was not wearing a helmet while driving a 1983 Harley Davidson motorcycle south on Route 11 in Onondaga with a large group of other motorcyclists, troopers said. …
Evidence at the scene and information from the attending physician indicate Contos would have survived if he had been wearing a Department of Transportation approved helmet, troopers said.
When foreign friends visit the States and are puzzled by some of the quirks of our Government, I often point to helmet laws — which differ state by state — as an example of how things work, or fail to work, depending on your point of view.
If the strongest argument in favor of a universal helmet law is that we all share medical and emergency costs to some degree and should therefore minimize them, what is the strong argument against such a law?
One bizarre unintended consequence of the rollback in helmet laws: more human organs available for transplantation. From SuperFreakonomics Illustrated:
Between 1994 and 2007, six states repealed laws that required all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Here’s a look at per-capita organ donations from male victims of motor-vehicle crashes in those states versus all other states.*
*See Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Todd Elder, and Brian Moore, “Donorcycles: Motorcycle Helmet Laws and the Supply of Organ Donors.”
Is the Idea of an Organ Market Losing Its Repugnance?
From a reader named Dmitry Mazin:
So I’m doing legalizing the organ market (selling your own organs only) for my speech class because I wanted to do something really repugnant and controversial.
Well, I passed out a survey to my class of about thirty people and two whole people were against this system. And this isn’t a progressive area — it’s in the Bible Belt of Southern California. Even Catholics were for it.
I think this corroborates that repugnance survey in the Freakonomics Radio episode “You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let’s Do It!”
So there you go.
Have a great day!
Hey, you have a great day too, Dmitry.
P.S.: I didn’t know there was a “Bible Belt of Southern California.” (Here’s a rare web cite about it; and here’s an earlier post called “We Pretend We Are Christians.”
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 »
An Organ Printer?
We’ve blogged at length about the shortage of donor organs in the United States. A company in San Diego is working on a solution to that problem. Read More »
Updates and Corrections: Biosphere2 and Israeli Organ Harvesting
In a recent post, we linked to a blog’s photo essay on Biosphere2, the “failed” and “abandoned” enviro-architectural project in the Arizona desert. But that information wasn’t accurate. Read More »
Why the Israeli Organ-Harvesting Story Is Probably False
A strange story has broken out in Sweden and Israel, with an article in Aftonbladet, a Swedish newspaper, by a journalist named Donald Bostrom.
According to The Times, Bostrom’s article “accuses the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from Palestinians wounded or killed by soldiers.” Read More »
Multi-Ethnic Corruption and the Black Market for Organs
You probably know already that 44 people were arrested yesterday, mostly in New Jersey, for corruption and money-laundering. They included mayors, rabbis, and assemblymen (oh my!).
The story is simultaneously vast and banal, seeming to illustrate every cliché of politicians and the people who seek to grease their palms. There are many, many angles to be discussed. A few thoughts that sprung to mind include: Read More »
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