Organ Trade

"Imagine that you have a wife who is dying of renal failure, and that you would give her one of your kidneys, but you are not a biological match. Now imagine that another couple is in the same bind. The kidney exchange locates and matches the couples: you donate your kidney to the stranger's wife, while the stranger gives his kidney to your wife; the operations are performed simultaneously to make sure no one backs out. Although this system has yielded only a couple dozen transplants so far, it illustrates an economist's understanding of incentives: if you can't get someone to give an organ out of altruism, and you can't pay him either, what do you do? Find two parties who are desperate to align their incentives."

This was proposed by a Harvard economist, Alvin Roth. WHAT A GREAT IDEA. It seems people can only see the negative side in these sensitive topics. A big thank you to the neoconservatives for instilling unjustified fear and anger into our culture because of their need to have markets converge to claimed "efficient levels"; moreover, thanks for your unyielding, seemingly unstoppable need to 'commodify' ever necessity of life. Let's leave this job to the specialists of the field. And only them. The collaborative effort between economists and medical specialists are producing significant results to support their claims. My do they put up a good fight!

Another method to increase participation in the donor system is practiced in Europe today. They designed a donor system with "opting in" as the default choice. An economist, Richard Thaler points out the default option is often the most attractive option, especially as the number of options increase -- of which he goes into explicit detail in his book "Nudge" on behavioral economics; a really good read.

There are amazing proposals to replace the waiting list. Don't listen to the radical nutsos. Because if I end up on that list of which 11 people die a day waiting for a kidney -- my acupuncturist said I have bad kidney energy -- there will be hell to pay, either in the afterlife or when reincarnated.

In the spirit of all the health care spat: People who lack health insurance are about 20 times more likely to donate their liver or a kidney for a lifesaving transplant than to receive one, a new study shows. Of course more poor people are going to want to sell their organs, but they will also receive the opportunity to actually get an organ vital for survival. A market for organs is definitely a debatable subject; not one I would like to delve into. Bottom line: It's about time to align the incentives!