"the obvious solution...is, of course, money"

One of my "favorite" small little topics: the market for vital organs and the consequences of whether it is allowed to function (legally) or not...

Here's Virginia Postrel in the Atlantic, as reprinted in the WSJ...

...kidneys are hard to come by. In the United States, more than 80,000 people are on the official waiting list, all hoping that someone will die in just the right circumstances and bequeath them the "gift of life." Last year, only 16,517 got transplants: 10,550 with the cadaver organs allocated through the list, and 5,967 from living donors. More than 4,000 on the list, or about 11 a day, died. And the list gets longer every year....

With 300 million people in the United States, the numbers shouldn't be so daunting. Eighty thousand people wouldn't even fill the Rose Bowl. Surely we could find enough kidney donors to end the list. But solving that problem demands creativity, daring, and, above all, a sense of urgency -- a radical break with the fatalism fostered by dialysis culture. Kidney patients ought to command the kind of outrage that demanded a cure for AIDS. The list doesn't have to exist....

But very few people are willing to give someone a kidney without getting something in return....almost all living donors are helping a relative or friend. Although many people call these donations "altruistic," they in fact offer donors a substantial benefit: saving someone they care about...

The obvious solution...is, of course, money. Altruistic blood donors often receive freebies like movie tickets or paid vacation hours that would be illegal for kidney donors. Plasma and sperm donors routinely receive cash, as do egg donors and surrogate mothers, who get tens of thousands of dollars. If transplant centers could pay $25,000 or $50,000 to each living kidney donor, many more people would line up to contribute.