The article devotes just 3 sentences, in a short aside, to the idea that kidney sales could be encouraged, in an orderly and fair manner, rather than prohibited. (It's the prohibition which creates black market profits and kills thousands waiting for kidneys.)<p>For more on this possibility:<p><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2008/05/13/kidneys-for-sale" rel="nofollow">http://reason.com/archives/2008/05/13/kidneys-for-sale</a><p><a href="http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/organ-sales-moral-travails-lessons-living-kidney-vendor-program-iran" rel="nofollow">http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/organ-sales...</a><p>Virginia Postrel, a former editor of <i>Reason</i> who actually donated one of her kidneys to a friend, has also written about donor chains and compensation:<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/with-functioning-kidneys-for-all/307587/?single_page=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/with-fun...</a>
My favorite blogger that touches on these issues is Al Roth (<a href="http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">http://marketdesigner.blogspot.com</a>), a professor now at Stanford.<p>One of the coolest ideas there is the "organ donation chain." Think of one patient's spouse donating their kidney to another patient, and vice versa; now add an intermediary couple, and you've got a chain where more kidneys reach better compatible hosts. Unfortunately, because someone could always get cold feet, a lot of these chains had been carried out simultaneously, which naturally limits the size of such a chain.<p>So the cherry on top is a "non-directed" starter kidney. With this initial gift of altruism there's a little more leeway to arrange the matches and it's a disappointment but not a showstopper when someone finally stops the chain.<p>Anyways, it's always nice to think about the stopgaps between now and the sci-fi organ-growing future.
> Some physicians and ethicists question the relative morality of allowing thousands to die just because the means of saving them is considered repugnant. A regulated marketplace, they say, could all but eliminate the shortage.<p>If synthetic organ synthesis (or regenesis) is successful, the field of transplantation will explode and the driver for this black market will disappear. Until that time, we're stuck with an ethically delicate situation. Curious to hear what HN thinks of creating such a regulated market, and whether it's fundamentally different from unpaid donations or chained donations.