National Kidney Foundation: 2017 Spring Clinical Meetings (SCM17) in Orlando

Here's the Welcome letter from the 2017 Program Chair, Dr. Dena Rifkin

"Be sure to join us on Wednesday April 19th for the special Keynote presentation by 2012 Nobel Laureate Alvin Roth, PhD, whose work led to the development of kidney donor-recipient matching algorithms.  Other individuals highlighted on this year's program include Shaul G. Massry Distinguished Lecture Award Winner Dr. Raymond Townsend who will be giving a presentation on “The Ailing Kidneys Under Pressure – and It’s Not Just Systolic” and Dr. Paul Palevsky’s plenary session on “We Don’t Have to Fail at Acute Renal Failure: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Quality Improvement.”

My talk will be on "Kidney Exchange: Recent History and Future Opportunities"

Assisted dying appeal to be heard in Britain

The Guardian has the story
Assisted dying

Terminally ill former lecturer wins right to fight assisted dying ban
Appeal court reverses high court ruling in case of Noel Conway, who has motor neurone disease and seeks judicial review

"In their judgment, Lord Justice McFarlane and Lord Justice Beatson said: “It is arguable that the evidence demonstrates that a mechanism of assisted dying can be devised for those in Mr Conway’s narrowly defined group that is practical so as to address one of the unanswered questions in the [earlier Nicklinson right to die case].”

Supported by the organisation Dignity in Dying, Conway has instructed lawyers to seek permission for a judicial review of the ban on assisted dying, which he says prevents him ending his own life without protracted pain. Assisted dying is prohibited by section 2(1) of the Suicide Act 1961 and voluntary euthanasia is considered murder under English and Welsh law."

A non-directed kidney donor writes eloquently about his experience

Dylan Matthews is eloquent about his decision to give a kidney to a stranger, and explicit about his experience, including post-surgical pain and his recovery. He's well worth reading.

Vox has the story: Why I gave my kidney to a stranger — and why you should consider doing it too

My colleague, the philosopher Debra Satz, points out to me that one of the altruistic donors whose experience motivated Matthews was her student. Philosophy is powerful.

Doctors harvesting organs from Canadian patients who underwent medically assisted death

The National Post has the story:
Doctors harvesting organs from Canadian patients who underwent medically assisted death

"Doctors have already harvested organs from dozens of Canadians who underwent medically assisted death, a practice supporters say expands the pool of desperately needed organs, but ethicists worry could make it harder for euthanasia patients to voice a last-minute change of heart.

In Ontario, 26 people who died by lethal injection have donated tissue or organs since the federal law decriminalizing medical assistance in dying, or MAID, came into effect last June, according to information obtained by the Post. A total of 338 have died by medical assistance in the province.

Most of the 26 were tissue donors, which usually involves eyes, skin, heart valves, bones and tendons.

Bioethicists and transplant experts say people who qualify for assisted dying deserve to be offered the chance to donate their organs. The gesture could bring a profound sense of psychological comfort, they say, provided the request for assisted death and the decision to donate are kept entirely separate."

Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good June 26, 2017 at MIT in Cambridge, MA

Social good, what's not to like?
Here's the announcement:
Workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good
June 26, 2017 at MIT in Cambridge,

"The first workshop on Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG '17) will be held in conjunction with the 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC '17) at MIT in Cambridge, MA on June 26, 2017, and will feature invited speakers, paper presentations, and a panel discussion with researchers in the EconCS community."

A transplant center in India has done 300 kidney exchange transplants

Here's the article, whose first author is Dr. Vivek Kute, of the Faculty of Nephrology and Transplantation, Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Center and Dr. H L Trivedi Institute of Transplantation Sciences ,
(IKDRC-ITS) Ahmedabad , India

Transpl Int. 2017 Mar 20. doi: 10.1111/tri.12956. [Epub ahead of print]

Impact of Single-Centre Kidney Paired Donation Transplantation to Increase the Donor Pool in India.

Kute VB1, Patel HV1, Shah PR1, Modi PR2, Shah VR3, Rizvi SJ2, Pal BC2, Shah PS1, Modi MP3, Butala BP3, Wakhare PS1, Varyani UT1, Shinde SG1, Ghodela VA1, Kasat GS1, Patil MV1, Patel JC1, Kumar DP1, Trivedi VB4, Patel MH4, Trivedi HL1.

Author information

Abstract

In a living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) dominated transplant programme, kidney paired donation (KPD) may be a cost-effective and valid alternative strategy to increase LDKT in countries with limited resources where deceased donation kidney transplantation (DDKT) is in the initial stages. Here, we report our experience of 300 single-centre KPD transplantations to increase LDKT in India. Between January 2000 and July 2016, 3616 LDKT and 561 DDKT were performed at our transplantation centre, 300 (8.3%) using KPD. The reasons for joining KPD among transplanted patients were ABO incompatibility (n=222), positive cross match (n=59) and better matching (n=19). A total of 124 two-way (n=248), 14 three-way (n=42), one 4-way (n=4) and one 6-way exchange (n=6) yielded 300 KPD transplants. Death-censored graft and patient survival were 96% (n=288) and 83.3% (n=250), respectively. The mean serum creatinine was 1.3 mg/dl at a follow-up of 3±3 years. We credit the success of our KPD programme to maintaining a registry of incompatible pairs, counselling on KPD, a high-volume LDKT programme and teamwork. KPD is legal, cost effective and rapidly growing for facilitating LDKT with incompatible donors. This study provides large-scale evidence for the expansion of single-centre LDKT via KPD when national programmes do not exist. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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Here's a related recent article by Dr. Kute:

World J Transplant. 2017 Feb 24;7(1):64-69. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v7.i1.64.

International kidney paired donation transplantations to increase kidney transplant of O group and highly sensitized patient: First report from India.

Kute VB1, Patel HV1, Shah PR1, Modi PR1, Shah VR1, Rizvi SJ1, Pal BC1, Shah PS1, Wakhare PS1, Shinde SG1, Ghodela VA1, Varyani UT1, Patel MH1, Trivedi VB1, Trivedi HL1.

Author information

Abstract

AIM:

To report the first international living related two way kidney paired donation (KPD) transplantation from India which occurred on 17th February 2015 after legal permission from authorization committee.

METHODS:

Donor recipient pairs were from Portugal and India who were highly sensitized and ABO incompatible with their spouse respectively. The two donor recipient pairs had negative lymphocyte cross-matching, flow cross-match and donor specific antibody in two way kidney exchange with the intended KPD donor. Local KPD options were fully explored for Indian patient prior to embarking on international KPD.

RESULTS:

Both pairs underwent simultaneous uneventful kidney transplant surgeries and creatinine was 1 mg/dL on tacrolimus based immunosuppression at 11 mo follow up. The uniqueness of these transplantations was that they are first international KPD transplantations in our center.

CONCLUSION:

International KPD will increases quality and quantity of living donor kidney transplantation. This could be an important step to solving the kidney shortage with additional benefit of reduced costs, improved quality and increased access for difficult to match incompatible pairs like O blood group patient with non-O donor and sensitized patient. To the best of our knowledge this is first international KPD transplantation from India.

Does criminalizing the purchase of sex endanger sex workers?

A lawyer who is also sex worker brings suit to overturn the law that makes purchasing sex a crime, on the grounds that this endangers prostitutes.

Northern Ireland sex worker bids to overturn ‘dangerous’ ban on hiring escorts
Laura Lee brings legal challenge to law that makes women ‘vulnerable to abuse’

"Sex worker and law graduate Laura Lee is steeling herself for a battle in Belfast’s high court that she believes could make European legal history. The Dublin-born escort is now in the final stages of a legal challenge to overturn a law in Northern Ireland that makes it illegal to purchase sex.

Not a single person in the region has appeared in court charged with trying to hire an escort, though Public Prosecution Service figures show that three are under investigation. The region is the first in the UK to make buying sex a crime. The law was introduced in 2014 by Democratic Unionist peer Lord Morrow and supported by a majority of members in the regional assembly.

But Lee will enter Belfast high court with her team of lawyers aiming to establish that the criminalisation of her clients violates her right to work under European human rights law. Since the law was established, Lee insists that the ban has put her and her fellow sex workers in more peril from potentially dangerous clients.

Just before flying out to address an international conference on sex workers’ rights in Barcelona this weekend, Lee told the Observer that most men currently seeking escorts in Northern Ireland no longer use mobile phones to contact her and her colleagues.

“They are using hotel phones, for example, to contact sex workers in Belfast rather than leaving their personal mobiles. This means if one of them turns violent there is no longer any real traceability to help the police track such clients down. Men are doing this because they fear entrapment and arrest due to this law.

“So in a sense the law is actually putting sex workers at greater risk than before, when there was some ability to trace and track down any client that was violent and abusive. The law to protect women in the sex trade has done the opposite of what it was intended to do. Every escort I know working in Belfast now insists on working side by side with another woman for protection. The law has not in any way reduced demand and supply, which is still the same. It has only driven the business further underground.”

...

"Lee’s Belfast legal battle is only the start of a Europe-wide campaign to overturn the model in which Scandinavian countries pioneered the outlawing of men buying sex. Lee’s next target is the Irish Republic, which, under new anti-trafficking laws, has introduced a similar ban aimed at criminalising clients.

“A win for us in Belfast will have a knock-on effect and set a precedent across Europe. If successful up north there will be a challenge in Dublin and sex workers across Europe can use the precedent to overturn the so-called ‘Nordic model’ in their countries,” she said."

A bridge of life: Global kidney exchange between Mexico and the U.S.

Here's the story, by Iván Carrillo:
Un puente de vida a través de la tecnología (and here in English)
Al mismo tiempo que el presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, busca construir un muro de miles de kilómetros en la frontera con México, un incansable cirujano y un reconocido economista suman esfuerzos para intercambiar órganos entre ciudadanos de ambos países

 Update: here's an English translation on the web :  http://nwnoticias.com/#!/noticias/a-bridge-of-life
"A bridge of life through technology
At the same time that US President Donald Trump is seeking to build a wall of thousands of miles on the border with Mexico, a tireless surgeon and a renowned economist join forces to exchange organs between citizens of both countries"

Further Update: Here's a corrected English translation provided by  Newsweek en Español, to be used only for nonprofit and educational  purposes.


Here's an earlier post about Marisol Robles, the Mexican patient in the global kidney exchange chain in the article:

La maga de riñones: The kidney conjurer (a poem about kidney exchange by Marisol Robles)

Understanding Markets Can Save Lives: Congressional Briefing and Reception, April 18

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), of which the American Economic Association is a member, is sponsoring a Congressional Briefing on April 18. If you're in Washington next Tuesday you could come and cheer on those Congress folks who are interested in supporting science.

WHY SOCIAL SCIENCE? Because Understanding Markets Can Save Lives: Congressional Briefing and Reception

April 18 @ 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Discussion with Alvin Roth, Winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics

Tuesday April 18, 2017
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Reception from 4:30 – 6:00 pm
2167 Rayburn House Office Building

RSVP by April 13.

Dr. Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George Gund Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. Dr. Roth’s fundamental research in market design has revolutionized kidney exchanges, allowing incompatible patient-donor pairs to find compatible kidneys for transplantation. Dr. Roth’s matching theories have also been applied to school matching systems used in New York City, Boston, Denver, New Orleans, and several other cities, among other applications.

Come learn how social science can have real, significant impacts on our everyday lives, often in unexpected ways.

This widely attended event is made possible with support from Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson and SAGE Publishing.

An unconvincing denial of police murders of gay men in Chechnya

The Guardian has the story. File this under "unconvincing denials."

Chechen police 'have rounded up more than 100 suspected gay men'
Russian newspaper says it has evidence that at least three men have been killed 

"The report was denied by the spokesman of the Chechen president, Ramzan Kadyrov, who suggested there were no gay people in the Muslim-majority region.
Ali Karimov said, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti: “It’s impossible to persecute those who are not in the republic.”
“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Karimov added."

College admissions in Denmark

There is a centralized college admissions system in Denmark, the KOT:
How to apply for a higher education programme in Denmark

Here's a recent article (in Danish) which I think says that the KOT uses a deferred acceptance algorithm:
Nobelprisvindende algoritme afgør, om du kommer ind på drømmestudiet

Google translate:
Nobel Prize-winning algorithm determines whether you enter the dreams studio
"Every year, nearly 100,000 young people into education via KOT, and there are many myths about how the coveted student places are allocated. Some think that it helps to think strategically with the priorities, but in fact is honesty the best strategy. There is namely a clever algorithm behind the distribution, which guarantees you a place on the best possible education, writes Troels Bjerre Lund, associate professor at the ITU."

School choice: the difference between common application and unified enrollment

 Joe Siedlecki of the Dell Foundation writes about school choice, with an emphasis on unified enrollment. (All of the unified enrollment systems mentioned below were designed with the help of the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice, IIPSC.)

All enrollment reforms are not created equal
Apr 04, 2017 ·

Common application ≠ unified enrollment

More specifically, a common application used across schools is not a unified enrollment system.  While both reforms may be an improvement on the existing “wild west” of school choice, they have different characteristics and they attempt to solve different problems.  The table below lays out some key characteristics of these different enrollment reforms, both of which are being pursued inn different places across the country.

Source: Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

Source: Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

The Brookings school choice index

Brookings has released their school choice index:

The 2016 Education and Choice Competition Index

Denver won the top spot for large districts for second year in a row in the 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI). The Recovery District serving New Orleans came in second. Denver and the Recovery District were the only two districts in the ECCI that receive grades of A on school choice.

Here are the top 12, of 112.

. 

Many of the school districts in the top 12 spots have had help from economists, including the top 5.  Much of that help has lately been organized through IIPSC, the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice.

Thank a scientist: ad campaign from National Academy of Sciences

Series Update: From Research to Reward From Research to Reward, the NAS series of articles and videos about the human benefits that arise from discoveries made through scientific research, is being promoted through Washington Post ads, broadcast messages on Washington’s NPR station, placement of ads on social media, and a telephone campaign aimed at making prospective partners aware of the availability of the materials for their own use. All products to date focus on the social and behavioral sciences. A new phase of the project will concern the geosciences and other natural sciences. Here's a picture of the Washington Post ad about economics, featuring kidney exchange: , (Here's my earlier post on the NAS video from which that picture comes: The human side of kidney exchange: video from NAS (5 minutes)

Top Trading Cycle algorithms in School Choice

Here is some theory of top trading cycles, together with our experience from school choice in New Orleans.

And here:
Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice:The Design of New Orleans’ OneApp

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak,Alvin E. Roth, and Olivier Tercieux

March 2017

Abstract: In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp.  The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on TopTrading Cycles (TTC) in a real-life allocation problem.  Since TTC was originally devised for settings in which agents have endowments, there is no formal rationale for TTC in school choice.  In particular,  TTC is a Pareto efficient and strategy-proof mechanism,  but so are other mechanisms.  We show that TTC is constrained-optimal in the following sense:  TTC minimizes  justified  envy  among  all  Pareto  efficient  and  strategy-proof  mechanisms  when each school has one seat.  When schools have more than one seat, there are multiple possible implementations of TTC. Data from New Orleans and Boston indicate that there is little difference across these versions of TTC, but significantly less justified envy compared to a serial dictatorship

Interview in La Vanguardia

When I was in Barcelona I was interviewed by Lluis Amiguet for La Vanguardia:

Alvin Roth, premio Nobel de Economía, presidente de la Asociación Americana de Economía
"¿Edad? Ser viejo es estupendo si consideras la alternativa. He diseñado métodos de emparejar donantes y receptores de riñón y de que cada niño encuentre escuela en Nueva York y Boston. Soy flamante académico de la Racef, ahora en el Instituto de España, y asesoro a la Barcelona GSE"

The photo is by Kim Manresa:

Julio Rotemberg (1953-2017)

An email from Nitin Nohria at HBS brings the sad news that Julio Rotemberg passed away this weekend after his long struggle with cancer.

In January I had the privilege of welcoming him as a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association. The citation ended by noting that "he is among the preeminent macro- economists of his generation through his many research contributions and their influence on the policy community."

Here we were in Chicago, at the 2017 AEA/ASSA meetings, where he accepted the award.

Surrogacy (and transplantation) in Spain

The Director of Spain's National Transplant Organization has an article comparing transplants to surrogacy (presently illegal in Spain). He proposes that altruistic (unpaid) surrogacy be legalized in Spain, and makes a comparison with the current Spanish law allowing only unpaid kidney donation.

Trasplantes y gestación subrogada  (Transplants and gestational surrogacy).
RAFAEL MATESANZ
DIRECTOR DE LA ORGANIZACIÓN NACIONAL DE TRASPLANTES

Emanuel Vespa has kindly translated the critical paragraph as follows:

"Legislation guided by the Spanish transplant legislation, which is itself based on altruism and anonymity, would allow regulating a small portion of cases in which the surrogate is a family member of friend who is neither forced nor monetarily compensated. It may also be possible to recreate something akin to altruistic organ donation, where women who would offer themselves as surrogates would play the role of `good samaritans' in anonymous and altruistic fashion. It is admittedly hard to imagine, but not more difficult to conceive than people who donate a kidney in similar circumstances, and there are hundreds of such candidates."

The Central European University is worth defending from government pressure

The Central European University in Budapest is in danger of being forced to shut down.

World’s leading economists ask Hungary to withdraw anti-CEU legislation

"More than 150 prominent European and American economists, including Presidents of European Economic Associations and more than a dozen Nobel Prize Laureates, have signed an open letter asking Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government to withdraw legislation that would force Central European University to shut down in Budapest. "
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And here's a Statement of solidarity with Central European University, from their colleagues at the Center for Economic and Regional Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CERS HAS).

Headlines that could have run on April 1

What was he thinking? Plane passenger stopped at Stansted with iPhone case shaped like a gun

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Pretender to France's non-existent throne embroiled in succession row 

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Icelandic president admits he does not have the legal authority to ban pineapple on pizza
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A Paid Hour a Week for Sex? Swedish Town Considers It