Learning from Iran
Tuesday, 15 January 2008 by Jacob TomawToday’s Cato Daily Podcast is about organ transplants and waiting lists. I was surprised to learn that Iran is the only nation that has implemented the only real solution.
Iran allows the sale of organs and, reportedly, no longer has a waiting list for transplants. Over 70% of the people on the waiting lists around the world are waiting for a kidney. Healthy kidneys are in bountiful supply. Worldwide there are more than 6 billion extra ones just hanging out. Also, my understanding is that there is nearly infinite supplies of livers, marrow, and blood.
January 15th, 2008 at 14:46
If calling my second kidney “hanging out”, methinks we don’t have as much to learn from Iran as you propose we do. It’s that whole value-of-life-mismatch going on in Iran that give it such a bad name world-wide.
January 15th, 2008 at 16:39
Me calling it “hanging out” is not a direct translation of the Farsi law. I am guess an closer translation would be that your kidney and all of your body is your property and as your property, you can are able to do with it as you like, including selling it.
This being Iran, there is probably some talk about your acts being in compliance with Allah. This compliance does not appear to prohibit one from selling their kidneys and saving someone else’s life.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:52
Since I work for the Blood Center/NMDP I will say that while there might be an “infinite” supply of Marrow that does not mean that people are willing to donate it. A potential donor must be willing to join the National Registry and even if they do that does not mean they are going to match a patient who needs a transplant. “There are currently 6,000 patients searching for a Bone Marrow Match on any given day and usually 2 in 10 will find a match” (that number is lower if the patient is a minority). The more people you have on the Registry the better but there are still people dying every day because they could not find a match (I think that goes for everything - organs, marrow and blood). I think I would be a little leary of people selling thier organs/marrow - from the people who come into the blood center every day asking to get paid for their donation I don’t think I would want thier blood in me unless it was tested and retested. Just my opinion and observation.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:28
The people who want to sell their blood, would you also not want it if they were donating it? I hope the standard of testing is not lower just because people are donating. There is nothing preventing someone with a blood disease from being altruistic.
Also, why would I buy blood from a person whose health i cannot verify. I don’t think my insurance company would buy that blood or organs either. They do not want me to get sicker from the procedure. I think the level of testing would increase if there were a white market for selling blood, organs, and tissue.
Mel do you know, for the average person how many marrow matches exist in the world? Are there some people where the matches are really low? Like I might only have marrow that is compatible with 1M people. That sounds like a lot but it is only .02% of all people.
January 16th, 2008 at 13:48
I kind of like this. What is the argument against the selling of organs, anyway? Seems like my heirs should get some money for my organs if I died, to offset my massive gambling debts. I mean, student loans, yeah.
It’d be interesting to see the market emerge on this. Take blood: O- blood can be used by pretty much everybody, AB blood can only be used by AB people. So, the going rate for O- should be higher, especially since only 8% of the population has it.
Why not create a futures market, too? You’d want to make sure to even out those supply and demand spikes, right?