I work in healthcare and did a paper about this for a Bioethics class.

The ninth circuit ruled in favor of compensation for bone marrow donation. At the time US Attorney General Eric Holder did not appeal the decision. The caveats are: donation only by apheresis, and the value assigned is $3000 and can be only in voucher form. Vouchers can be applied to education, housing, or charitable contribution.

Apheresis? I had to look that up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apheresis

Apheresis (ἀφαίρεσις (aphairesis, “a taking away”)) is a medical technology in which the blood of a donor or patient is passed through an apparatus that separates out one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation.

That's wrong, to tell people they can only have the money to use for certain things. It is not the government's business. And "housing" -- what about vacation housing if you so desire? Are there loopholes?

More on bone marrow donation, which I thought must be painful.

https://bethematch.org/transplant-basics/how-marrow-donation-works/myths-and-facts-about-bone-marrow-donation/

Bone marrow donation is a surgical, usually outpatient procedure. You will receive anesthesia and feel no pain during the donation. Doctors use a needle to withdraw liquid marrow from the back of your pelvic bone.

Though no medical procedure is without risk, there are rarely any long-term side effects donating either PBSC or bone marrow. Your cells replenish themselves in 4 to 6 weeks.

Because only 1 to 5% or less of your marrow is needed to save the patient’s life, your immune system stays strong.

Amy,

I'm not sure about loopholes with the ruling. I also looked at Medical tourism and the future of lab created organs.

Gestational carriers and egg donors get paid. Sperm donors get paid. Why can't kidney or liver donors? I'm signed up to donate everything when I die, and I'm on the bone marrow donation registry. I'd NEVER donate a kidney while I'm alive, to anyone but my own kid. But people willing to do that should absolutely get paid. Yes, that means poor people will be less likely to get organs. But you know what? They currently get free organs and all the care afterwards, courtesy of our tax dollars. The rest of us have to shell out big bucks for that care is we need it. This would just mean everyone incurs the same costs. Seems fair to me.

Speaking of....if anyone knows anyone who might be willing to be a traditional surrogate, I'd love to give them my contact info! (not for me, I've already got 4)

I have no objections to selling kidneys and think restricting or preventing payments reduces the number of people who would donate.

I have a friend who is currently a gestational surrogate for a gay man in Israel (gays can't adopt or do surrogacy there). She's getting $40,000 for doing it. What surprised me is when she said that surrogacy is restricted to those of good financial means already, meaning the surrogate has to be financially stable, above a certain income level, and minimal debts to be considered. It is supposed to be a safeguard against exploitation.

I absolutely think that donors should get paid. It would save lives for one thing. I have thought about organ donation but I doubt I would do it unless I was compensated. I would be effected for a couple of months. Who is going to take care of my personal business such as keeping my home. How would it effect my career. Donation would cost me. Compensation would merely attempt to make me whole.

This is what people worry about. If people will be paid, I say make sure that they get proper after-care and give them enough money to make a difference for people as well as have provisions for the times when things go wrong.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-24128096

The greatest victory the left has won in the U.S. is to make profit be seen as an evil. Even many people who don't see it as evil still put a distasteful connotation on it. People who work only for profit go to great rhetorical lengths to come up with alternative explanations for why they do what they do, just to avoid telling the truth in "polite company."

Screw polite company. Profit is the source of all our wealth, and every dollar flowing into the coffers of governments, so-called "morally superior" nonprofits and churches was once someone's profit. Until this attitude changes we are in serious trouble.

You know, most blood banks stopped paying blood donors sometime back in the 80's with the advent of the AIDS epidemic.
They knew it was in the blood supply. They just couldn't detect it yet.

They decided they would rather risk shortages than transfuse blood that was going to kill people.

The risks are many times greater of getting an unusable or diseased organ or blood if the addict down on the street corner is the guy selling it to fund his next few drug fixes.

Isab - you most certainly touched on one of the reasons NOT to pay people for tissue, blood, organs, etc. donations. Money can be a strong motivation for some people who should NOT be donating.

And, we do NOT have all the knowledge that we think we have to screen out potential problems.

My other concern with this is, what about truly desperate people. Do they have to sell their organs before they really have nothing to qualify for aid? Do we really want people to have to consider themselves not quite destitute if they still have their organs?

What happens when a person has sold a kidney, a lung, spinal fluid, and most of his liver? And he's still desperate? And now he wants to know what else he can sell?

Do we wrap ourselves in a libertarian blanket and comfort ourselves with the warmth of saying it was that person's choice? A society should have scruples and some form of morality, lest it be little more than a mob.

Allowing people to sell themselves (prostitution or organ donation) is to invite the wolves to plunder the sheep.

^^exactly Conan.

Hmm.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/27/kidney-trade-illegal-operations-who

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/africa/08ORGA.html

There are others. If you identify as a donor and your info gets hacked, what keeps the Mob from showing up at your house early?

After you receive a donation and your money is gone, what happens when your body starts rejecting the new organ?

Some of Obamacare is set up to see that you do NOT have better coverage than it can offer. What happens when Obamacare does the calculation and decides that no, you aren't worth the slot/cost?

Allowing people to sell themselves (prostitution or organ donation) is to invite the wolves to plunder the sheep.

Allowing people to sell their labor for money is to invite slavery

Allowing people with high cholesterol to eat meat is tantamount to murder

Allowing unmarried people to fornicate is sin

Where the fuck do you get the unmitigated gall to tell me what I am or am not ALLOWED to do motherfucker?

Where the fuck do you get the unmitigated gall to tell me what I am or am not ALLOWED to do motherfucker?

Because in the current USAian culture, if you run into problems due to your poor choices, you'll be put on the dole and supported by government largess.

Until that changes, yeah, I'm gonna claim some unmitigated gall. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Now, if you had to fall back on your own, or your family's, or your friends or other third party's largess, I'll forgo the gall.

So then you dont eat meat as its bad for you? You get the government approved amount if exercise?

Allowing people to sell their labor for money is to invite slavery ~ lujlp at May 8, 2016 5:56 PM

One is not facilitating the slavers by empowering the laborer. By legalizing the selling of organs or sex, one empowers those who would take advantage of the desperate.

People who advocate legalizing prostitution and organ selling always imagine that it will lead to a sunshine world with unicorns and eternal happiness.

They never admit the potential that sometimes legalizing something illegal can lead to a situation worse than the black market. The legalized pimp is no less vicious than the illegal one, and no less a cancer on society than his illegal counterpart.

The legal prostitute is being used no less than the illegal one. And what does it do to our collective psyche that we sanction her use? (What does it profit a man...?)

You imagine a world of courtesans, well-treated and independent. Such a world might exist in the corridors of wealth, but will not exist at the margins, where people are most in need of the protection of a social order that does not condemn them to a life of slavery at the hands of others. You don't see a world of drug-addled syphilitic legal prostitutes unable to escape such a life. The porn industry is a good metaphor for legalized prostitution. What price will we pay for adding to the sanctioned sleaziness in our society?

Drug legalization arguments center on the violence, tax monies, and failures of a multi-billion dollar war against them. There is no War on Prostitution or War on Organ Selling sucking up massive amounts of taxpayer monies, making legalization a financial gain for the government and the taxpayer. There is no financial windfall to be realized in the taxation of legalized organ sales or prostitution.

Your argument hinges on the fact that people should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies. And, for the most part, I agree. However, legalizing preying on the desperate leaves society with a pack of legalized wolves in its midst.

Most people forget that civilization is not some veneer of niceness pasted on top of wilderness - clothing or manners or paved roads and sewage lines. Civilization is a system that must be tougher, and sometimes more brutal, than the barbarity it holds back. Weakening the ties of civilization is to invite the barbarians inside the walls. We should be wise and consider the consequences before we do so.

Allowing unmarried people to fornicate is sin ~ lujlp at May 8, 2016 5:56 PM

Religions have been saying that for centuries. And, yet unmarried people continue to fornicate.

Allowing people to sell their labor for money is to invite slavery ~ lujlp at May 8, 2016 5:56 PM

Also, not allowing someone to sell their labor for money is, by definition, slavery.

So....

Regarding the three toddler's analogy, it doesn't work because no one is giving up anything to pull a child out of the pool.

If I give up one of my kidneys (which I can't because they wouldn't take a donation from a gay man who's ever had sex, even once, since 1976), that means I only have one left.

And what if something goes wrong with the one I have left? Can I claim my other kidney back because I need it?

Or do I simply live the rest of my life on dialysis? Or perhaps wait for someone to give me one of theirs?

It's not quite so black and white, in these days when the United States is moving toward socialized medicine, to increase one's own risks.

"Regarding the three toddler's analogy, it doesn't work because no one is giving up anything to pull a child out of the pool."

You are correct. The analogy is a poor one.

Kidney donation has a lot of risks to the donor. The real analogy might be jumping into a fast moving river to try and save a toddler. How much money would it take if it wasn't your own kid?

I also have been banned from the blood donor list due to living in Europe when mad cow was raging in England.

I think the medical ultra cautiousness is partially the result of an out of control tort system, but at the same time, think it will be quickly a non issue with the possibility of lab grown organs right around the corner.

I also can't wait for self driving cars to totally hose the revenue stream for police departments nation wide.

I also can't wait for self driving cars to totally hose the revenue stream for police departments nation wide. ~ Isab at May 9, 2016 2:56 PM

Not just police departments, but city, county, and state governments, who are the real instigators of traffic fines.

And it won't "hose" anything. You think the state won't impose a new tax to make up the lost revenue? States will pass mileage taxes to replace "lost revenue" due to people driving electric and high mileage cars or from automated cars leading to lower traffic citation revenue.

California recently raised electrical rates because too many people installed solar panels and the electrical utility revenues declined - even though the state paid them to install the solar panels and cut their electric grid dependence.

And it won't "hose" anything. You think the state won't impose a new tax to make up the lost revenue? States will pass mileage taxes to replace "lost revenue" due to people driving electric and high mileage cars or from automated cars leading to lower traffic citation revenue.

Conan, it is going to be harder to do than you think. In this case, the interstate commerce clause may be your friend.

They can raise the gas tax fairly easily, but there is a limit to what the voters will take, especially in states that are four and five hundred miles across with a small population base.

Other than turning their roads into toll,roads, it is going to be hard to make a tax on mileage palatable or enforceable, especially against out of state vehicles.

Kansas has since removed their highway tolls when most of their previous and lucrative cross country traffic moved up to I 80. Speed limits were higher, and there are no tolls west of Illinois.

Don't assume because the egregious taxation levels in California are the norm there that this sort of thing will fly in Texas or Wyoming.

Cheap energy is one of the fundamental requirements for economic development. They will be strangling development and any industry with high taxes on traportation. I think about eighty percent of all goods in this country are moved by truck at some point in the supply chain.

Many states are already choking their business base with sales taxes. Eventually the wheels are going to come off.

Conan,

Often traffic citations are a tax levied against the poor and more significantly non-locals. Once these taxes are applied only to locals and evenly across the board you may get a different answer.