Progress: Bone Marrow Donors Can Now Be Paid For Certain Donations

A legal loophole currently exists which allows people to be paid for their donation of bone marrow when its made through a process similar to a blood donation. They will not be opening themselves up to prosecution which can lead to a fine and jail time.

See this opinion piece by Sally Satel, M.D. (who deserves a big kudos for valiantly challenging the political and medical community hegemony which outlaw people from exchanging valuable consideration, otherwise known as money, to obtain an organ transplant) here which was in the Wall Street Journal this morning for more details.

Obviously, if people want to make altruistic organ and tissue donations, they should be lauded for their sacrifice.

But many people die while awaiting a donation. So paying people to donate is an alternative which should be legal when coupled with certain legal protections. See my posts about the subject here and here Also, we pay physicians for their efforts to keep poeple alive, we pay companies for artificial heart pumps which keep people alive, and we pay for dialysis to keep people alive. Why shouldn't we allow people to pay for organs in a regulated environment to insure people are informed of all of the reasons both pro and con and them let them make their own informed decisions!!!???

The following is a paragraph excerpted from an earlier post realting to this subject:
There is currently a government policy forbidding “valuable consideration” which is legalese for money to be exchanged between parties in order for one party to supply a kidney to the other party who is suffering from ESRD. This policy was introduced as an attempt to squelch the market for trafficking of human organs. While the intentions might arguably have been noble at the time the legislation was passed, with the benefit of hindsight, the unintended consequence of this legislation leads to additional thousands of people dying annually who are on the U.S. kidney transplantation waiting registry but succumb to the vagaries of ESRD before a kidney become available for transplantation.

It is time to modernize and change the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 (NOTA) so that one more person doesn't have to die needlessly because of this antiquated and obsolete law!!!