We mostly focus on computer technology here at TLF, but there are other types of technologies that are arguably more important. For all my railing against the DMCA, I have to concede that, as far as I know, it’s never gotten anybody killed. The same can’t be said, unfortunately, of our organ-donation system. AEI’s Sally Satel writes:
When Rob Haneisen, a reporter at the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, Mass., who has written about people in situations like hers, asked Lisa if he could interview her for a story, she jumped. Perhaps former colleagues, long lost friends, or a Good Samaritan would read about her and volunteer to donate. Lisa had even begun coordinating with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to prepare for a transplant, should a donor come forward as a result of the News article that ran on April 16.
Enter Dr. Douglas Hanto, head of the transplant division at Beth Israel. He had heard about Lisa’s circumstance when Haneisen called him for an interview as part of the story. Before speaking to the reporter, Hanto had his staff phone Lisa right away to deliver shocking news: Beth Israel would flatly refuse to do her transplant if the only donor she could find was a kind-hearted stranger who responded to the article.
“We are in favor of donors coming forward and donating to the next person on the waiting list,” Hanto told Haneisen. And how many have done that so far over the years, the reporter asked? “Just a couple,” Hanto admitted. Also puzzling is Hanto’s assertion: “We have hundreds of people on the waiting list. If we support some favored status for one patient, how can we really say we are being fair and looking out for all our patients?”
The fact is that Lisa harms nobody if a stranger responds to her story and comes to her aid. In fact, she helps people on the list because she is taken out of the cadaver-waiting queue and others can move up.
Transplants in this country are handled by the United Network for Organ Sharing, a non-profit organization with a government-granted monopoly on the distribution of organs. The “bioethicists” at UNOS are obsessed with ensuring that organs are distributed “fairly,” even if fairness leads to fewer donations and more people dying. The system is arbitrary, it’s stupid, and–most importantly–it’s deadly
Obviously, we’d like the distribution of organs to be as fair as possible. But a far more important objective is to increase the number of donors so that fewer people die. Death is never fair, and I doubt it’s going to be any consolation to the family of somebody who died on a waiting list that no one was allowed to cut in line ahead of them.
What’s to be done? The best solution would be to allow financial incentives to organ donors. If we’re too squeamish about a full-blown free market in organs, we could at least allow some tightly regulated rewards to those who choose to become donors.
In the meantime, you should check out LifeSharers. It’s a network of organ donors who have specified that their organs should go preferentially to other LifeSharers members. This has two beneficial effects. First, if you should ever need a transplant, your odds are increased because you’ll get priority should any LifeSharers members’ organs become available. But more importantly, you increase the incentive for others to become LifeSharers members (and therefore, organ donors) too.
People respond to incentives. It’s an obvious point, but it’s one that seems lost on the “bioethicists” who are currently standing in the way of creative solutions to the organ shortage.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
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