Saturday, March 14, 2015

Sally Satel on compensation for kidney donors

Sally Satel, in the Pacific Standard, makes the case for compensating kidney donors, illustrated with a photo including the first organ donor, Richard Herrick, who gave a kidney to his identical twin brother in 1954 (and passed away in 2010):

The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors
"Our current system is failing dramatically because altruism isn’t a sufficiently motivating force to give up an organ. We need to test incentives, to reward people who are willing to save the life of a stranger through donation."


Dr. John P. Merrill (left) explains the workings of a then-new machine called an artificial kidney to Richard Herrick (middle) and his brother Ronald (right). The Herrick twin brothers were the subjects of the world's first successful kidney transplant, Ronald being the donor.

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