Congressional Kidney Failure

A kidney donor takes to the pages of The New York Times to argue that what he's doing shouldn't be a big deal: 

More than 34,000 people joined the waiting list in 2010; fewer than 17,000 received one. Thousands of people die waiting each year.

This is a tragedy, but it doesn't have to be this way. The people waiting for kidneys aren't dying because of kidney failure; they're dying because of our failure — without Congress's misguided effort to ban organ sales, they would have been able to get the kidneys they desperately needed.

Shoring up his case, last week's Ninth Circuit court decision (mostly) legalizing the sale of bone marrow. Technically, that decision hinges on the replenishability of bone marrow (thus making it similar to blood and semen, which were already legal to sell under the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984). But the court also notes that marrow donation was once far more difficult, painful, and risky than it is today. The same is true of kidney donation. 

Mmm…kidneys for sale.