"Your prayers have been much appreciated, and we certainly can use more of them in the future," writes Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters [via Pajamas Media]. His precious First Mate is suffering and downhearted:
Today she started her third week of treatment for her polyoma virus infection, and her blood pressure and creatinine levels have gone up rather dramatically since last week. The doctors informed us today that the FM will need a new kidney and that we probably can't expect too much more function from the current transplant.
She's exhausted and pretty dispirited about the developments today, but we're hoping that we can get lucky in finding another donor.
The average wait for a cadaver donor in this part of the country is four to five years, which means that she'll need to go back on dialysis if the treatment can't recover at least some part of the current transplant's function . . .
We're not a believer, but we're praying for her now. If any of our readers can help -- with kind thoughts, prayers or knowledge of a transplant source -- please go over to Captain Ed's blog and lend your support.
Update: Check out today's Opinion Journal for "An Incentive to Give: Short of selling kidneys, there's a way to use markets to encourage organ donation".
By some estimates, 20,000 transplantable organs are buried or cremated each year.
It's statistics like those that have led more than 3,500 people to join a nonprofit organization called LifeSharers. Each has signed a legal document authorizing the donation of his organs and -- this is the significant part -- requesting that they be offered first to another member of LifeSharers if a suitable recipient is on the UNOS waiting list. Kindness aside, each member's goal here is to increase his chances of receiving a transplant, should he ever need one, by giving other people an incentive to sign up in the hope of increasing their chances.
This is called a directed donation, and directed donations are not popular at UNOS [United Network for Organ Sharing], where the watchword is "fairness." Somebody's willingness to donate is not supposed to count when scarce organs are rationed out.
Without knowing anything about it other than human nature and Darwinian economics, we would comment that -- like democracy -- market incentives may be the worst possible form [of business model] except for all the other forms.
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