Two papers on repugnance and payments for body parts

Here's an NBER paper by Nicola Lacetera, which includes this in the acknowledgments: "I dedicate this paper to the memory of my friend Julia Fletcher, whose life could have been longer if a bone marrow match were found for her."

Incentives and Ethics in the Economics of Body Parts

Nicola Lacetera

NBER Working Paper No. 22673
Issued in September 2016
NBER Program(s):   HE      PE 

Research shows that properly devised economic incentives increase the supply of blood without hampering its safety; similar effects may be expected also for other body parts such as bone marrow and organs. These positive effects alone, however, do not necessarily justify the introduction of payments for supplying body parts; these activities concern contested commodities or repugnant transactions, i.e. societies may want to prevent certain ways to regulate a transaction even if they increased supply, because of ethical concerns. When transactions concern contested commodities, therefore, societies often face trade-offs between the efficiency-enhancing effects of trades mediated by a monetary price, and the moral opposition to the provision of these payments. In this essay, I first describe and discuss the current debate on the role of moral repugnance in controversial markets, with a focus on markets for organs, tissues, blood and plasma. I then report on recent studies focused on understanding the trade-offs that individuals face when forming their opinions about how a society should organize certain transactions.

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And here's another, by Julio J. Elias, Nicola Lacetera, and Mario Macis

Efficiency-Morality Trade-Offs in Repugnant Transactions: A Choice Experiment

Julio J. Elias, Nicola Lacetera, Mario Macis

NBER Working Paper No. 22632
Issued in September 2016
NBER Program(s):   HE   LE   PE 

Societies prohibit many transactions considered morally repugnant, although potentially efficiency-enhancing. We conducted an online choice experiment to characterize preferences for the morality and efficiency of payments to kidney donors. Preferences were heterogeneous, ranging from deontological to strongly consequentialist; the median respondent would support payments by a public agency if they increased the annual kidney supply by six percentage points, and private transactions for a thirty percentage-point increase. Fairness concerns drive this difference. Our findings suggest that cost-benefit considerations affect the acceptance of morally controversial transactions, and imply that trial studies of the effects of payments would inform the public debate.

A look into how transplant centers are monitored (and organs are allocated)

Here's a press release saying that the University of Pittsburgh's iconic transplant center has been taken off probation by UNOS. The reason they were on probation is interesting:
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center released from probation

"The Board had placed UPMC on probation in June 2015. Its lung transplant program had an unusually high number of instances where they accepted lung offers for one transplant candidate, then transplanted another candidate at the program. This inappropriately limited opportunity for consideration of other candidates identified on the match run."

A kidney donor at 18 who is now a medical student feels he didn't give sufficiently informed consent (and some reactions)

Here's the story in the Washington Post: At 18 years old, he donated a kidney. Now, he regrets it.

"Five years after the surgery, when I was 23 and getting ready to go to medical school, I began working in a research lab that was looking at kidney donors who had gone on to develop kidney failure. For that research, I talked to more than 100 such donors. In some cases, the remaining kidneys failed; in others, the organ became injured or developed cancer. The more I learned, the more nervous I became about the logic of my decision at age 18 to donate.

"And then in 2014, a study looking at long-term risks for kidney donors found that they had a greater risk of developing end-stage renal disease. Another study that same year raised the possibility that they may face a heightened risk of dying of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality (although this point remains controversial).

"Other studies and surveys, though, suggest that the risk, while greater, isstill fairly small.

"The truth is, it is hard to get good numbers about what happens to donors. Hospitals are required to follow them for only two years post-donation, which does not catch such long-term complications as chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular issues or psychiatric issues. There is no national registry for kidney donors or other large-scale means of tracking long-term outcomes."

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Here are some responses posted on Trio (TRANSPLANT RECIPIENTS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION)

Response to living kidney donation regret Washington Post news story

CATEGORIES // General Interest, UNOS News

A recent news story appearing in the Washington Post talked about an 18 year old living kidney donor's concerns and regret for that donation.  In a response to that, TRIO board member, Josh Morrison, offers his own thoughts on that concern based on his altruistic living kidney donation.  Photo is of Josh and his unrelated recipient, John, whose story is shared in Josh's article linked below (along with a link to the original 'regret' story).

RELATED ARTICLES

• The original 'concern &regret' Washington Post story
• Josh's response article  (Almost all kidney donors are proud, like me. So why did one negative story go viral? Updated by Josh Morrison Oct 11, 2016
• Letter to the Editor by another 'no regrets' living donor  (I donated a kidney. I have no regrets.)

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Here's a different take on nondirected donation (and the resulting chains...)

These six people donated their kidneys to complete strangers and saved 140 lives in the process — here’s why

Nondirected donor kidney exchange chains come to the UK

In the U.S., many kidney exchange transplants now occur in chains begun by nondirected donors. Rule changes in Britain may allow transplants to increase this way too

Progress is being made in kidney exchange in the UK. The Mirror has the story:
Kidney 'triple transplant chain' rule change brings hope to thousands and has already saved 48 people

"Rule changes last year mean more healthy kidneys are available – bringing fresh hope to ­thousands of patients on the waiting list.

"From April 2015, it became possible for a stranger to give up a kidney and spark a series of donations. We have discovered that for each of 16 such donations, three people received a transplant.

"Previously, the chain was limited to two people who were in the National Living Donor Sharing Scheme, set up to allow pooling of organs from willing donors not a match for their own sick loved ones.

"Under triple transplant chains, a stranger’s kidney is allocated to the first recipient, a patient who is enrolled in the sharing scheme.

"In turn, the first recipient’s friend or relative, who wants to donate to their loved one but cannot because they are not a match, donates to another patient in the scheme, the second recipient.
...
"Any adult can ­volunteer to be ­considered an altruistic donor. You must be over 18 in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, and over 16 in Scotland.

The 16 Brits who gave their kidneys to patients they did not know first had several months of physical and psychological tests at their local transplant centre to ensure they were able to safely donate, and to confirm which recipients would be a suitable match."

Are promises made to living donors being upheld?

Here's a press release from the American Society of Nephrology on a forthcoming article:
Are promises made to living donors being upheld?

• Most prior living kidney donors in the United States who later need a transplant receive one quickly, but some are not readily given the priority they were promised when they donated.
• About 40 to 50 prior living donors in the United States are added to the kidney waiting list each year, and more than 130,000 living kidney donors have donated over the past several decades.

Washington, DC (September 1, 2016) -- A new study finds some shortcomings by the transplant community in providing prompt access to transplantation for living kidney donors who later develop kidney disease and need a transplant. Donors are told that they will have priority for transplantation if they ever need a kidney, so any delays in providing this access must be addressed. The study's results appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Jennifer Wainright, PhD (United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS) and her colleagues examined how consistently living donors get transplant priority in a timely fashion, using information from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), which includes data on all donors, wait-listed candidates, and transplant recipients in the United States. UNOS is the private, non-profit organization that manages the nation's organ transplant system under contract with the federal government..

Among the major findings:

• There were 210 prior living donors added to the OPTN kidney waiting list between January 1, 2010 and July 31, 2015.
• As of September 2015, 167 of the donors received deceased donor transplants, 6 received living donor transplants, 2 died, 5 were too sick to transplant, and 29 were still waiting.
• Median waiting time to receive a deceased donor transplant for prior living donors was 98 days.
• Only 40.7% of the donors were listed before they began dialysis; 68.3% were in inactive status, which means they were not eligible for organs, for <90 1-2="" 17.6="" 5.4="" 8.6="" 90-365="" and="" days="" for="" years="">2 years.
• Median time for prior living donors waiting in active status before receiving priority was 2 days; 67.4% received priority within 7 days after activation, but 15.4% waited 8-30 days, 8.1% 1-3 months, 4.1% 3-12 months, and 5.0% waited >1 year in active status for priority.
• After receiving priority, most were transplanted quickly, and the median time in active status with priority before deceased donor transplant was 23 days.

"We found that most prior living kidney donors on the kidney waiting list are transplanted quickly, but some spend periods of time waiting in inactive status. Others wait weeks or months on the waiting list without priority access, which must be requested by their transplant hospital," said Dr. Wainright. "UNOS has developed procedures and education that aims to reduce these delays in the future."

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HT: Philip Held

John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences medal and memorabilia: Auction at Sotheby's

 Here's the auction page:
John F. Nash, Jr.'s 1994 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 
17 OCTOBER 2016 | 2:00 PM EDT | NEW YORK,
Estimate  2,500,000 — 4,000,000  USD.

There are some essays and paragraphs from colleagues and relatives at the auction link.
Here's a 3 minute video from Sotheby's, advertising the auction...

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Update:
I'm guessing that this results page means that the auction closed without a sale (perhaps because the reserve price was not reached...):
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/results.results.sale.pdf/2016/john-f-nash-jrs-1994-nobel-memorial-n09586.pdf

JOHN F. NASH, JR.'S 1994 NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES October 17, 2016 Sale Number N09586 Sale Total (Including Buyer's Premium) 0 USD

Hart and Holmstrom 2016! Congratulations to Oliver and Bengt:)

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2016/

Family consent to deceased donation remains a concern in Britain

The Guardian has the story
Organ donation rates for transplants still too low in UK, says NHS
Consent rate one of lowest in Europe, with black, Asian and ethnic minority communities of particular concern

"A record number of organs were donated and transplanted in the UK in 2015-16 but the consent rate is still one of the lowest in Europe, with a worrying shortfall of donors from black or Asian communities.

In the 12 months to the end of March, 1,364 people became organ donors when they died and their donations resulted in 3,519 transplants taking place, figures published on Thursday show.

The consent rate stood at 62%, slightly up on 2012-13 when it was 57%, but well short of the target of 80% by 2020 with the biggest obstacle being family refusal, mostly when they were unaware of their deceased relative’s intentions.

The consent rate was much lower (34%) among potential black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) donors, which is of particular concern as 26% of the current waiting list are BAME."

More on kidney black markets in India

Top Indian Hospital Complicit In Lucrative Black Market for Human Organs

"Five doctors from one of India’s most distinguished hospitals were charged ... with performing illegal kidney transplants connected to an organ harvesting ring.

"The doctors, including a medical director and a chief executive, worked out of the prestigious L.H. Hiranandani Hospital in Mumbai. The trafficking racket was discovered in July after police were tipped off by poor villagers from Gujarat state who sold their kidneys.
...
"Unrelated donors can donate organs if the government confirms that no money has changed hands in the transaction. People can also source organs from cadavers or brain-dead patients, with the family’s permission, but these options are not common.
...
"A similar ring was broken up in June at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi. Handlers at Indraprastha forged documents to show that recipients were related to donors. In reality, donors were paid about 300,000 Rupees (roughly $4,500) for their kidneys, which were then resold at a high profit.

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see earlier post:

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Kidney black market arrests at Apollo hospital in Delhi

Drug deaths and deceased organ donors

Traffic accidents are down, but drug deaths are up, not just in total numbers but among deceased organ donations. ("Hypoxia" has entered my vocabulary in the last year...)
The NY Times has a story:
As Drug Deaths Soar, a Silver Lining for Transplant Patients

"As more people die from overdoses than ever before, their organs — donated in advance by them or after the fact by their families — are saving lives of people who might otherwise die waiting for a transplant.
...
"So far this year, 69 people in New England who died from an overdose have donated their organs, according to the New England Organ Bank. They account for 27 percent of all donations in the region, up sharply from 2010, when eight donors, or 4 percent, were drug users.

Because doctors can use multiple organs from each person, these 69 deceased drug users saved the lives of 202 other people, according to the organ bank.

Nationwide, more than 790 deceased drug users have donated organs this year, accounting for about 12 percent of all donations. That is more than double the 340 drug users who donated in 2010, or about 4 percent of the total, the organ bank said.

“It’s an unexpected silver lining to what is otherwise a pretty horrendous situation,” said Alexandra K. Glazier, chief executive of the New England Organ Bank, which procures organs for transplant in the six New England states and Bermuda.

Drug users have long been considered high risk because they often carry diseases like H.I.V. or hepatitis C. But at a time of a severe organ shortage, the volume of organs available from overdose deaths has led transplant centers to try to use them instead of throwing them away. With rigorous screening, officials say, the risk of transplanting an infected organ is small. Moreover, they say, hepatitis C can be treated if not cured and H.I.V. made manageable. Either is usually preferable to death.

“We know now that the mortality rate of being on the waiting list for several years is higher than that of getting an organ with an infection that is treatable,” said Dr. Robert Veatch, a professor emeritus of medical ethics at Georgetown University, who has written extensively about organ transplants.
...
"Transplants were initially associated with deaths from car accidents, which is why organ donors are noted on driver’s licenses. But overdoses (47,000 in 2014) have surpassed car crashes (32,000 in 2014) as the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. The growing numbers of overdoses from synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil have only heightened the drug toll.

Drug users are now the fastest-growing category of donor. They rank fourth, behind donors who died of strokes, blunt injuries and cardiovascular problems.

But even as drug users are making a life-or-death difference for some recipients, the need for organs remains vast.

There are 120,000 people on the national wait list for transplants. While 85 people receive one every day, 22 others die every day before a match is found.

One advantage of drug users as donors is that they tend to be younger and healthier than other donors, said Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing, which administers the nation’s organ procurement network.
...
"Dying of an overdose, which usually occurs when oxygen cannot reach the brain, does not affect kidney function or other organs. The drugs and blood are flushed from the organs when they are removed from the body."

Crossing borders in search of health, welfare, safety (video)

Here's the video of a short (20 minute) talk I gave at the U Chicago's Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group conference on Market Design Perspectives on Inequality: Crossing borders in search of health, welfare, and safety . (My slides, which are hard to see in the video, are here.)

I speak mostly about Global kidney exchange, and then briefly about surrogacy and refugee resettlement.

Sohn Conference, San Francisco, Oct 5

I'll be speaking about market design to investment managers at a charitable conference today: Sohn San Francisco, October 5, 2016, Hyatt Regency San Francisco, 5 Embarcadero Center

"The Excellence in Investing for Children’s Causes Foundation (EICCF) supports underserved Bay Area students in 9th-12th grade to improve graduation rates and college acceptances. Inspired by the Sohn Conference Foundation and with their support, the EICCF created Sohn Conference San Francisco... Like the Sohn Conference New York, EICCF’s annual Sohn Conference San Francisco is an annual investment conference in which top money managers, academics, and celebrities offer insights and ideas for charity. We hope you’ll join us for another day of great discussions in support of a great cause.
Learn about the organizations we are benefiting this year. Click Here."

Here's the conference schedule.

Why might machine learning be unfair?

Hear Aaron Roth speak on this at Penn Law School, starting around minute 7:30 (you can control the video from under where the slides appear, and you can also speed it up--1.5x is still quite intelligible):

What is Machine Learning? And Why Might it be Unfair? at the Optimizing Government Workshop

Here's a slide I liked from minute 35, about why a simple classifier rule might be a better judge of a majority population than of a minority population, simply because there are a lot more data points for the majority. (+'s are people who paid back their loans, -'s did not, the trick is to predict who will pay based on observables, in this case number of credit cards and SAT scores. The orange population is in fact more credit worthy, but has overall lower SAT scores. If you can only use one classifier, the best one is the blue line: and it denies credit to all the orange folks. If you could take group membership into account and use two lines, you could also distinguish the credit worthy oranges...)

Unraveling of college sports recruiting--continued

Inside Higher Ed has the story:
Too Young to Commit?
Urging colleges to change a recruiting culture that targets middle schoolers, Ivy League announces proposals for curbing early recruitment of athletes.

"The Ivy League will announce today a series of proposals aimed at curbing early recruiting in college sports, urging other National Collegiate Athletic Association members to “change the culture of recruiting that forces prospective student-athletes to commit earlier and earlier.”

The proposed Division I rule changes, which would potentially be voted on at the NCAA’s annual meeting in January, would prohibit verbal offers from coaches to potential recruits until Sept. 1 of the student’s junior year of high school. The legislation would also prohibit players initiating or receiving phone calls with and from college coaches, and ban any recruiting conversations at camps or clinics until that date.

"Current NCAA Division I rules differ among sports, but they largely already prohibit players from receiving phone calls from a coach, going on official campus visits or getting an offer before their junior or senior year. Prospective athletes are allowed to initiate phone calls with coaches, however, and are allowed to visit campuses and meet with coaches prior to their junior year, as long as the trip is an unofficial visit not paid for by the institution.

...

"Harris pointed to increasing transfer rates in intercollegiate athletics as evidence athletes are making recruitment decisions too early. According to the NCAA, one-third of college athletes transfer to another program.

“There’s a lot of talk about there being a transfer problem,” Harris said. “Well, I would say a lot of the problem with transfers is the fact that we have individuals making decisions too soon that are too rushed.”

Early recruiting is especially prevalent in sports like women’s soccer and lacrosse, where some players are being recruited as early as middle school. An analysis by the New York Times and the National Collegiate Scouting Association in 2014 found that 36 percent of women’s lacrosse players who use the consulting firm to commit to colleges are doing so early, as are 24 percent of women’s soccer players.

The athletes cannot sign binding letters of intent at such an early age, but middle school students are increasingly announcing verbal commitments to specific institutions after receiving unofficial scholarship offers from coaches."

Kidney exchange chains (a survey, including possibly the longest chain to date)

Here's a survey on non-simultaneous kidney exchange chains: Are Transplant Chains the Answer to Our Kidney Deficit? by Melissa Laracy

On long chains:
"Currently, the longest living kidney donor chain is the University of Alabama at Birmingham Kidney Chain. Started in December 2013, it has since grown to include 112 individuals, yielding a total of 56 kidney transplants as of December 2015."

See also "Celebrating the nation's longest kidney chain" at UAB

The Econometrics of Matching Models by Pierre-André Chiappori and Bernard Salanié in the JEL

The Econometrics of Matching Models
Pierre-André Chiappori and Bernard Salanié
Journal of Economic Literature 2016, 54(3), 832–861

Abstract: Many questions in economics can be fruitfully analyzed in the framework of matching models. Until recently, empirical work has lagged far behind theory in this area. This review reports on recent developments that have considerably expanded the range of matching models that can be taken to the data. A leading theme is that in such two-sided markets, knowing the observable characteristics of partners alone is not enough to credibly identify the relevant parameters. A combination of richer data and robust, theory-driven restrictions is required. We illustrate this on leading applications.

Here is the opening paragraph:
"In October 2012, the Nobel prize was attributed to Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley
for their work on matching. Both the seminal Gale and Shapley (1962) paper and most of Roth’s work were concerned with allocation mechanisms when prices or other transfers cannot be used—what we will call nontransferable utility (NTU) in this survey. Gale and Shapley used college admissions, marriage, and roommate assignments as examples; Roth’s fundamental work in market design has led to major improvements in the National Resident Matching Program (Roth and Peranson 1999) and to the creation of a mechanism for kidney exchange (Roth, Sönmez, and Ünver 2004). While these are important economic applications, matching problems are much more pervasive. Market and nonmarket mechanisms such as auctions match agents with goods and buyers with sellers; agents match to each other in production teams, and production tasks are matched with workers; and in international trade, countries are matched with goods or varieties. Yet while the basic theory of matching was in place forty years ago, only recently has there been an explosion of empirical work in this area. Several developments have concurred to bring it to the attention of applied researchers."

A von Neumann medal in the shape of a saddle point

It's a little hard to see, but the medal forms a saddle point: the intersection of the two lines is a maximum in the horizontal direction and a minimum in the vertical direction...  It had been a long time since I thought of equilibrium that way, but it is from von Neumann's first game theory paper, on two person zero sum games and the minimax theorem.

It is from my trip to Hungary in early September. You can read about it in Hungarian...

Nobel-díjas közgazdász, Alvin E. Roth kapta idén a Neumann János-díjat

Piaci megoldással osztaná el a migránsokat a Nobel-díjas közgazdász


Nobel-díjas közgazdász oldhatja meg a menekültproblémát

Hungarian radio: (interview in Hungarian voice-over)
A pénz sem old meg mindent - így látja a Nobel-díjas, InfoRádió / Czwick Dávid

Isten teremtette a búzát. És az árutőzsdét? (a newspaper interview in Hungarian)

Google translate: God created the wheat. And the commodities market?

It looks like paying donors of bone marrow/ blood stem cells will remain illegal...

The long story of whether some forms of blood stem cell (marrow) donation may be compensated seems to be coming to an end, back where it began.  Here's the new HHS/HRSA regulation, saying that whether as marrow or in the blood stream, these are considered organs under the National Organ Transplant Act, so no valuable consideration can be given...

View EO 12866 Meetings

Printer-Friendly Version     Download RIN Data in XML

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HHS/HRSA

RIN: 0906-AB02

Publication ID: Spring 2016

Title: Definition of Human Organ Under Section 301 of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984
Abstract:This final rule clarifies that peripheral blood stem cells are included in the definition of bone marrow under section 301 of the National Organ Transplantation Act of 1984, as amended and codified in 42 U.S.C. 274e.
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services(HHS)	Priority: Info./Admin./Other
RIN Status: Previously published in the Unified Agenda	Agenda Stage of Rulemaking: Final Rule Stage
Major: No	Unfunded Mandates: No
CFR Citation: Not Yet Determined     (To search for a specific CFR, visit the Code of Federal Regulations.)
Legal Authority: Pub. L. 109-129    Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005, as amended in 2010 by Pub. L. 111-264

Legal Deadline:  None

Timetable: Action Date FR Cite NPRM  10/02/2013  78 FR 60810    NPRM Comment Period End  12/02/2013  Final Rule  11/00/2016

Regulatory Flexibility Analysis Required: No	Government Levels Affected: Undetermined
Small Entities Affected: No	Federalism: No
Included in the Regulatory Plan: No
RIN Data Printed in the FR: No
Agency Contact: Dr. James Bowman Medical Director, Division of Transplantation Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 12C-06, Rockville, MD 20857 Phone:301 443-4861

HT: Kim Krawiec

Is vote swapping related to vote selling the way kidney exchange is related to kidney sales? (a blog post by Scott Aaronson on vote swapping)

Here's a blog post from Scot Aaronson's blog "Shtetl Optimized". He points out that although vote trading is illegal, vote swapping seems not to be. (Apparently it's the money that matters, as in kidney exchange versus kidney sales...)

Here are the critical paragraphs in that connection from his post:

"On August 6, 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals finally ruled on a case, Porter v. Bowen, stemming from the California attorney general’s shutdown of voteswap2000.com.  Their ruling, which is worth reading in full, was unequivocal.

Vote-swapping, it said, is protected by the First Amendment, which state election laws can’t supersede.  It is fundamentally different from buying or selling votes."

Here's the whole post, together with some interesting updates added later.

The Ninth Circuit ruled that vote-swapping is legal. Let’s use it to stop Trump.

"Updates: Commenter JT informs me that there’s already a vote-swapping site available: MakeMineCount.org.  (I particularly like their motto: “Everybody wins.  Except Trump.”)  I still think there’s a need for more sites, particularly ones that would interface with Facebook, but this is a great beginning.  I’ve signed up for it myself.

Also, Toby Ord, a philosopher I know at Oxford, points me to a neat academic paper he wrote that analyzes vote-swapping as an example of “moral trade,” and that mentions the Porter v. Bowendecision holding vote-swapping to be legal in the US."

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Here are two passages from the Ninth Circuit opinion that I found particularly relevant.

The first says that operating vote swapping sites might be protected political speech:

"On the merits, we hold that Jones violated Appellants’ First Amendment rights. The websites’ vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutionally protected. Although California certainly has valid interests in preventing election fraud and corruption, and perhaps in avoiding the subversion of the Electoral College, these interests did not justify the complete disabling of the vote-swapping mechanisms."

The second addresses the issue of "corruption":

"Corruption. Beginning with the State’s anticorruption interest, we reiterate that we construe this interest to encompass only the prevention of illicit financial transactions such as the buying of votes or the contribution of large sums of money to legislators in exchange for political support. See WRTL, 127 S. Ct. at 2676 (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment); NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 497; Buckley, 424 U.S. at 26-27. So defined, this interest was not advanced by the threatened prosecution of the owners of voteswap2000.com and votexchange2000.com. The websites did not encourage the trading of votes for money, or indeed for anything other than other votes. Votexchange2000.com actually included a notation that “It is illegal to pay someone to vote on your behalf, or even get paid to vote yourself. Stay away from the money. Just vote” (emphasis in original). And there is no evidence in the record, nor has the Secretary argued, that any website users ever misused the voteswapping mechanisms by offering or accepting money for their votes. "

HT: Nicole Immorlica

National Living Organ Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC)

I've recently joined the advisory board of the National Living Organ Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC), which gives certain forms of financial assistance--mostly travel assistance--to living organ donors.  I expect to learn more about what they do, and can do, in the months to come.

Here's a page outlining how to apply for travel assistance.

And here's a paper describing its history and experience:
Development of the National Living Donor Assistance Center: reducing financial disincentives to living organ donation, by
Patricia H. Warren, RN, CPTC, Kimberly A. Gifford, MBA, Barry A. Hong, PhD, Robert M. Merion, MD, and Akinlolu O. Ojo, MD, PhD, MBA

Abstract: Over the years, the transplant community has worked to advance the care of living organ donors; however, barriers remain, including the nonmedical expenses incurred by living donors. A new center, funded by a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), was established to operate a nationwide system to remove these financial disincentives. The HRSA grant was awarded to an academic institution and the daily operations are managed by a transplant professional society. Expenses are reimbursed prospectively for financially needy living donors. Combining the legislative authority and economic resources of the federal government, the research experience of an academic institution, and the management know-how of a professional society has proven to be successful. To date, the center has received 3918 applications submitted by 199 different transplant centers and receives about 80 applications per month. On average, a donor spends $2767 for their travel expenses to the transplant center. Of the 3918 applications that have been submitted, 1941 of those applicants (50%) have completed their donor surgery.