51–60 of 67 posts
Why should I care about this person, and how is it relevant to startups, hacking, technology, etc.? "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
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I'll admit I haven't read the case you references, but once you build a financial marketplace around something, it will get controlled, manipulated and exploited. Why stop at bone marrow? Everybody's got a couple kidneys ... why not let people sell one? What about the donors who regularly give blood donations today? Would they stop doing so without being paid? I believe it's an oversimplification to just say that the…
> Why stop at bone marrow? I would draw a very clear line: Renewable tissue and organs can be sold, non renewable ones can't. Blood, sperm, marrow: All sellable. Kidneys: Nope, donation only. Liver, skin: On the fence. (They renew, but only with scarring, and can be taken only a limited number of times.)
You guys may be interested in Flynn vs. Holder, which is a court case attempting to strike down the federal prohibition on selling bone marrow. If you could buy and sell bone marrow, all parties agree that that would happen more frequently than bone marrow donation. The side that believes that would be bad won. (A brief sketch of the concern: if you allow money into the equation, either a) people who won the marrow l…
http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/paying-people-for-bone-marrow-d...
You guys may be interested in Flynn vs. Holder, which is a court case attempting to strike down the federal prohibition on selling bone marrow. If you could buy and sell bone marrow, all parties agree that that would happen more frequently than bone marrow donation. The side that believes that would be bad won. (A brief sketch of the concern: if you allow money into the equation, either a) people who won the marrow l…
Not quite. The recent decision by the Ninth Circuit lets the prohibition stand as to bone marrow directly extracted from bones, but struck it down as to bone-marrow-derived stem cells extracted from blood. This should significantly increase the availability of donated bone marrow: http://volokh.com/2011/12/01/paying-people-for-bone-marrow-d...
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> Why stop at bone marrow? I would draw a very clear line: Renewable tissue and organs can be sold, non renewable ones can't. Blood, sperm, marrow: All sellable. Kidneys: Nope, donation only. Liver, skin: On the fence. (They renew, but only with scarring, and can be taken only a limited number of times.)
Liver is renewable, but living donation is extremely risky to the liver donor.
But my understanding is that someone can only donate a liver once, even though it regenerates. Perhaps that just because doctors are uncomfortable with the risk of a second donation?
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Liver is renewable, but living donation is extremely risky to the liver donor.
I'm not worried about risk, that's for the donor/seller to decide. Higher risk, higher money. It's no different than hazard pay for dangerous jobs. But my understanding is that someone can only donate a liver once, even though it regenerates. Perhaps that just because doctors are uncomfortable with the risk of a second donation?
I don't do liver transplant so I'm at the limit of my knowledge re: number of liver donations, but I would guess that it has to do with the fact that the donated segments do not regrow; the liver regains function, but not form.
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I'm not worried about risk, that's for the donor/seller to decide. Higher risk, higher money. It's no different than hazard pay for dangerous jobs. But my understanding is that someone can only donate a liver once, even though it regenerates. Perhaps that just because doctors are uncomfortable with the risk of a second donation?
I don't agree that tissue renewability is the correct sole factor in determining whether said tissue should be for sale. I think that donor risk is much more important. I consider this to be a bioethical issue but I think it's also pretty political so I'll probably refrain from making much of an argument here. I don't do liver transplant so I'm at the limit of my knowledge re: number of liver donations, but I would g…
It would be important to me certainly, if I was considering donating.
But at the end of the day each person much decide for themself. Just like people decide on a level of risk when accepting a job.
If people are allowed to risk their life on a job to make money, they should be allowed to risk their life to donate tissue to make money.
For donations though, any significant risk is probably not acceptable, which is the current situation.
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I'll admit I haven't read the case you references, but once you build a financial marketplace around something, it will get controlled, manipulated and exploited. Why stop at bone marrow? Everybody's got a couple kidneys ... why not let people sell one? What about the donors who regularly give blood donations today? Would they stop doing so without being paid? I believe it's an oversimplification to just say that the…
Not to fight this battle with you in the comments, but a) you only get two kidneys but bone marrow is, like blood cells, a replenishable resource and b) it is absolutely, unequivocally the case that paying people for blood, plasma, and gamete donations (all of which we do , but we're circumspect about saying so) increases the amount of people who are willing to participate in blood, plasma, and gamete donation. The b…
This is the only problem. It's false. Well ... it might be false. Extrinsic rewards ($10) tend to displace intrinsic rewards (I saved someone's life!).
If the reward is high enough, you will certainly get lots of donors. But if the reward is too high, poor people may get shut out.
Because of the intrinsic reward, it might be better if blood was donated. I'm not so sure about bone marrow though - if there's enough of a shortage (due to it being much harder to donate than blood), then it might be worth it. Poor people won't be able to afford it (or will be really screwed by the costs), but at least some people will get it. And donors won't feel the warm glow of having saved a life, but they will feel the warmer glow of a big fat cheque (as I'm assuming the extrinsic reward will be higher than the intrinsic reward it displaced).
As for organs, you could end the shortage now if you mailed out donation forms, and said that anyone who didn't sign on as a donor (after they don't need the bits, of course) would be shunted to the bottom of the list if they needed one later on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll admit I haven't read the case you references, but once you build a financial marketplace around something, it will get controlled, manipulated and exploited. Why stop at bone marrow? Everybody's got a couple kidneys ... why not let people sell one? What about the donors who regularly give blood donations today? Would they stop doing so without being paid? I believe it's an oversimplification to just say that the…
> Why stop at bone marrow? I would draw a very clear line: Renewable tissue and organs can be sold, non renewable ones can't. Blood, sperm, marrow: All sellable. Kidneys: Nope, donation only. Liver, skin: On the fence. (They renew, but only with scarring, and can be taken only a limited number of times.)
Blood has a low cost to the donor, so the "feel good" intrinsic reward is high enough to keep the supply going. Adding a price will just make it more expensive for poor people who need transfusions.
Because kidneys are so expensive to donate, you can't rely on people's goodwill, so both poor people and rich people miss out. Of course, you would have to ensure that they wouldn't be sold to clear debts.