Still illegal in Idaho

 Here's a map from The Hill of places where marijuana will be legal to various degrees by the end of this year. Grey states are where marijuana is still entirely illegal.  Despite the best attempts of the previous presidential administration to make America grey again, Idaho is one of only three states that remain grey: they are surrounded by states in which cannabis is legal in some form, and most of Idaho's neighbors have legalized marijuana (even) for recreational purposes (bright green on the map).

But Idaho is holding the line, which seems to be politically popular there.

The NYT has the story:

A Legal Pot Pioneer Was Busted in Idaho With 56 Pounds. He Has a Plan.  By Corey Kilgannon

"In retrospect, the Idaho shortcut might have been a bad idea.

...

"Idaho is surrounded mostly by pot friendly states and is strict about people driving through with the stuff. The authorities are especially vigilant in “corridor counties” along Interstate 84, of which Gooding County — where Mr. Beal encountered the state police — is one.

"Under state law, carrying more than 25 pounds of marijuana is a felony with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years; the maximum is 15 years, with a maximum fine of $50,000.

“It’s one of the worst places in the country to possess marijuana, definitely,” Michelle Agee, Mr. Beal’s court-appointed lawyer, said. “Idaho is stuck in the 1950s as far as marijuana goes. It’s definitely the wrong place, wrong time for a person to be accused of having marijuana.”

...

"Reached for comment, Idaho’s attorney general, Raúl R. Labrador, a former Republican congressman who helped found the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that legalization in neighboring states had done nothing to deter the strict enforcement of the laws in Idaho.

“We’ve watched how those decisions to legalize drugs have ruined other states, and Idaho demands just a bit better for our citizens and communities,” he said. “If you are trying to transport marijuana across state lines through Idaho, take the long way instead. It’ll save us money on your incarceration.”

Jon Levin to be new President of Stanford.

 

Stanford alum, business school dean Jonathan Levin named Stanford president

Interviews by lottery at Queens University School of Medicine

 Overwhelmed by large numbers of applications, and concerned about fairness, Queens University will set admissions thresholds (on grades and exam scores) and then determine by lottery which applicants move to the interview stage.

New admissions process improves equitable access to the Queen’s MD Program

"Queen’s Health Sciences (QHS) is adapting its MD Program admissions process to create a more inclusive entry point for all applicants, minimize systemic barriers to becoming a doctor, and increase student diversity.

"The renewed medical student admissions process will launch this fall, for 2025 admissions, and includes a pathway for lower socioeconomic status (SES) applicants and adjustments to the current Indigenous pathway. A new comprehensive approach to support the recruitment of Black students will launch in a second phase of this admissions change.  

...

"The MD Program will set admissions thresholds for grade point average (GPA), Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), and Casper (a situational judgment test) at levels that align with the potential for predicting success in medical school, without concern for the number of applicants who meet these thresholds. While the MD Program already posts GPA thresholds, as part of this change, MCAT thresholds will be posted as well. All applicants who meet these thresholds will be entered into a lottery to determine who will be invited to interviews. "

HT: Jonah Peranson (of National Matching Services)

UNOS and HRSA agree on new short-term OPTN contract

 In case you were wondering about the transition to a new deceased organ allocation model:

UNOS and HRSA agree on new short-term OPTN contract, March 29, 2024, Richmond, VA

"Today, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) announced it has signed a new short-term contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to oversee the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The new contract will go into effect tomorrow, March 30, as our current one expires today, and has a base period of nine months and the option to extend it for two additional six-month periods.

"In the interest of OPTN continuity in service of patients, UNOS agreed to largely maintain the current scope of work with minimal changes in cost. The new contract accommodates the separate UNOS corporate Board of Directors and OPTN Board of Directors, including the provision of appropriate insurance for the OPTN Board.

“We look forward to continuing our partnership with the federal government to help patients get the transplants they need and provide the stability the government desires for the OPTN,” said Maureen McBride, Ph.D., CEO of UNOS.

"Aligned with the establishment of the new UNOS corporate board, HRSA announced this week that it intends to establish a new separate legal entity to serve the OPTN board of directors over the next 90 days."

Children in China

 The NYT ran an interactive story on China's change in family policy, from one child (from 1979 to 2015), to two and now to three. At the link you can see old slogans and new ones.  But it was hard to limit family sizes, and it's hard to increase them. (The relaxation of the one-child policy increased demand for surrogacy in China, where it isn't legal. But it isn't clear how much demand there is for three children families.)

OneThree Is Best: How China’s Family Planning Propaganda Has Changed, By Isabelle Qian and Pablo Robles  

"For decades, China harshly restricted the number of children couples could have, arguing that everyone would be better off with fewer mouths to feed. The government’s one-child policy was woven into the fabric of everyday life, through slogans on street banners and in popular culture and public art.

"Now, faced with a shrinking and aging population, China is using many of the same propaganda channels to send the opposite message: Have more babies.

"The government has also been offering financial incentives for couples to have two or three children. But the efforts have not been successful. The birthrate in China has fallen steeply, and last year was the lowest since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949."

"Under the one-child policy, local governments levied steep “social upbringing fees” on those who had more children than allowed. For some families, these penalties brought financial devastation and fractured marriages.

"As recently as early 2021, people were still being fined heavily for having a third child, only to find out a few months later, in June, that the government passed a law allowing all married couples to have three children. It had also not only abolished these fees nationwide but also encouraged localities to provide extra welfare benefits and longer parental leave for families with three children."

#######

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Surrogacy in China: available but illegal

Headlines that could have been April 1

 

Chinese zoo denies its sun bears are humans dressed in costumes

Nose-Picking Health Workers Had Higher COVID Risk— "Deserves more consideration as a potential health hazard," researchers say

US driver pulled over with huge African bull riding shotgun in car. Converted vehicle stopped in Nebraska with gigantic-horned Watusi bovine called Howdy Doody as passenger

Man Shot Dead at Pole-Dancing Studio, Naked Dancers Flee Into Night

Reform and Conservative Converts Qualify for Subsidized Circumcisions, Israel's Top Court Rules

Authorities Seize Alligator Being Held Illegally in Home Near

 Buffalo

(the alligators should be housed near the crocodiles...)

MATCH-UP 2024 7th International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences, Oxford, 9 - 11 September, 2024

 Here's the announcement and call for papers of the latest edition of the Match-Up series of conferences.

MATCH-UP 2024   7th International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences 

University of Oxford, United Kingdom   9 - 11 September, 2024

 "MATCH-UP 2024 is the 7th workshop in an interdisciplinary and international workshops in the series on matching under preferences. It will take place on 9 - 11 September 2024, hosted by the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

"Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and the task is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal with respect to these preferences.

"The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas.

"List of Topics

"The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:

• Two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g., college admissions, medical resident allocation, job markets, and school choice)
• Two-sided matchings involving agents and objects (e.g., house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, and school choice)
• One-sided matchings (e.g., roommate problems, coalition formation games, and kidney exchange)
• Multi-dimensional matchings (e.g., 3D stable matching problems)
• Matching with payments (e.g., assignment game)
• Online and stochastic matching models (e.g., Google Ads, ride sharing, Match.com)
• Other recent applications (e.g., refugee resettlement, food banks, social housing, and daycare)

Fraud in physics? Room temp superconductors, again

 It should come as no surprise that it's not only social sciences that can be roiled by accusations of research misconduct.

Here's a story in Nature about a scientist who had a paper retracted from Nature, and then had another accepted, and then also retracted, both about room temperature superconductors.  It's a long, detailed story, but it says something about both science and about peer review.

Superconductivity scandal: the inside story of deception in a rising star’s physics lab. Ranga Dias claimed to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductors, but the work was later retracted. An investigation by Nature’s news team reveals new details about what happened — and how institutions missed red flags.   By Dan Garisto

"A researcher at the University of Rochester in New York, Dias achieved widespread recognition for his claim to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductor, a material that conducts electricity without resistance at ambient temperatures. Dias published that finding in a landmark Nature paper1.

"Nearly two years later, that paper was retracted. But not long after, Dias announced an even bigger result, also published in Nature: another room-temperature superconductor2.

...

" Nature has since retracted his second paper2 and many other research groups have tried and failed to replicate Dias’s superconductivity results. ...The scandal “has damaged careers of young scientists...

...

"Three previous investigations ... by the University of Rochester did not find evidence of misconduct. But last summer, the university launched a fourth investigation,... That fourth investigation is now complete and, according to a university spokesperson, the external experts confirmed that there were “data reliability concerns” 

...

"Nature retracted the CSH paper on 26 September 2022, with a notice that states “issues undermine confidence in the published magnetic susceptibility data as a whole, and we are accordingly retracting the paper”.

...

"Felicitas Heβelmann, a specialist in retractions at the Humboldt University of Berlin, says misconduct is difficult to prove, so journals often avoid laying blame on authors in retractions. “A lot of retractions use very vague language,” she says.

...

"The lack of industry-wide standards for investigating misconduct leaves it unclear whether the responsibility to investigate lands more on journals or on institutions.

...

"After Nature published the LuH paper in March 2023, many scientists were critical of the journal’s decision, given the rumours of misconduct surrounding the retracted CSH paper.

...

"All four referees agreed that the findings, if true, were highly significant. But they emphasized caution in accepting the manuscript, because of the extraordinary nature of the claims. Referee 4 wrote that the journal should be careful with such extraordinary claims to avoid another “Schön affair”, referring to the extensive data fabrication by German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, which has become a cautionary tale in physics and led to dozens of papers being retracted, seven of them in Nature. Referees 2 and 3 also expressed concern about the results because of the CSH paper, which at the time bore an editor’s note of concern but had not yet been retracted. 

...

"When asked why Nature considered Dias’s LuH paper after being warned of potential misconduct on the previous paper, Magdalena Skipper, Nature’s editor-in-chief, said: “Our editorial policy considers every submission in its own right.” The rationale, Skipper explains, is that decisions should be made on the basis of the scientific quality, not who the authors are."

Stanford Center for Computational Market Design: Inauguration on Monday

 On Monday, there's a market design event:

Stanford Center for Computational Market Design: Inauguration

Please register to attend the event. Registration is free of charge.

Mon, Apr 1 2024, 1:45 - 7pm

Mackenzie Room, Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center Room 300 475 Via Ortega 3rd Floor Stanford, CA 94305                     

1:45-2:00 Welcome and Introductions

2:00-2:30 Kidney transplants: At Stanford and around the world   Alvin Roth, Professor of Economics, Stanford University

2:30-2:45 Introduction to the Center   Amin Saberi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

2:45-3:30  Panel Discussion: Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google), Jonathan Hall (Chief Economist/VP of Applied Science, Uber), Ann Miura Ko (Co-Founding Partner, Floodgate)    Moderator: Itai Ashlagi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Coffee Break  

4:00-4:30 Auctions with Computationally Difficult Constraints  Paul Milgrom, Professor of Economics, Stanford University

4:30-5:00 What is Missing in Market Design? Michael Schwartz, Chief Economist and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

5:00-5:30 Redesigning the U.S. Organ Donation System: Moving from Monopolies to Patient-Centered Accountability  Jennifer Erickson, Senior Fellow, Federation of American Scientists    Gregg Segal, CEO, Organize

5:30-5:45 Summary and Wrap-up  Itai Ashlagi, Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

5:45   Reception

Cannabis in US airports

 An anomaly of US Federal law is that marijuana is illegal on airplanes (interstate commerce) even when the airports involved are in states where marijuana is legal.

The WSJ has the story and a picture:

Don’t Put Your Stash in the Overhead Bin. A ‘Cannabis Amnesty Box’ at Chicago’s Midway Airport.  By Bob Greene

Danny Kahneman (1934-2024)

 Danny Kahneman passed away today.

Here's the Washington Post obituary:

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-winning economist, dies at 90. He found that people rely on shortcuts that often lead them to make wrongheaded decisions that go against their own best interest  By Chris Powe

"Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and best-selling author whose Nobel Prize-winning research upended economics — as well as fields ranging from sports to public health — by demonstrating the extent to which people abandon logic and leap to conclusions, died March 27. He was 90.

"His death was confirmed by his stepdaughter Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor for the New Yorker. She did not say where or how he died.

...

"Dr. Kahneman took a dim view of people’s ability to think their way through a problem. “Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions,” he wrote in his popular 2011 book “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” “They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.”

"Dr. Kahneman spent much of his career working alongside psychologist Amos Tversky, who he said deserved much of the credit for their prizewinning work. But Tversky died in 1996, and the Nobel is never awarded posthumously.

"Both men were atheist grandsons of Lithuanian rabbis, and both had studied and lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their three-decade friendship and close collaboration, chronicled in Michael Lewis’s 2016 book “The Undoing Project,” was a study in opposites.

"According to Lewis, Tversky was the life of the party; Dr. Kahneman never even went. Tversky had a mechanical pencil on his desk and nothing else; Dr. Kahneman’s office was full of books and articles he never finished. Still, Dr. Kahneman said, at times it was as if “we were sharing a mind.” They worked so closely together that they tossed a coin to decide whose name would go first on an article or a book.

"Their research helped establish the field of behavioral economics, which applies psychological insights to the study of economic decision-making, but also had a far-reaching effect outside the academy. "

Mexico’s Law Suit Against US Gun Dealers

U.S. gun dealers are protected against lawsuits stemming from crimes committed by their customers. by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), But that law doesn't protect them from lawsuits resulting from their own actions, and a U.S. judge has permitted a suit by Mexico to go forward which accuses five Arizona gun dealers of violating American laws.

Law.com has the story:, 

Federal Court in Arizona Allows Mexico’s Case Against US Gun Dealers to Proceed. The federal gun industry shield law should not keep the suit from moving forward, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled. by Amy Guthrie 

"A federal district court judge in Arizona has ruled that a lawsuit filed by the government of Mexico against five Arizona firearm dealers alleged to be engaging in weapons trafficking should be allowed to proceed.

"U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Márquez held that the federal gun industry shield law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), should not prevent the suit from advancing. 

...

"The complaint “adequately alleges that defendants’ knowing violation of firearm-specific statutes proximately caused plaintiff’s injuries for purposes of the predicate exception to the PLCAA,” she wrote in her ruling, dated March 22.

"Mexico’s lawsuit seeks to hold the dealers accountable for “reckless and unlawful business practices,” alleging they facilitated gun trafficking across the border into Mexico and contributed to gun violence in that country. "

American guns fuel Haiti's gangs

The U.S. is an importer of illegal drugs, and an exporter of illegal firearms (i.e. firearms whose sale is legal, even protected in the U.S., but illegally smuggled into countries that would like to control firearms...)

The Guardian has the story:

Guns and weapons trafficked from US fueling Haiti gang violence. Experts say most guns smuggled from states with lax firearms laws such as Florida, Arizona and Georgia.  by Oliver Laughland

"As Haiti has again plunged into violent chaos, images of gang members bearing high-powered rifles, pump-action shotguns or automatic weapons in the streets of Port-au-Prince have become ubiquitous.

"But this weaponry is not made in Haiti, a country with no firearms or ammunition manufacturing capabilities.

"It is an arsenal that largely comes directly from the US, with most guns, experts say, likely to have originated from states with lax firearm laws, and many trafficked into Haiti from Florida.

"This clandestine trade has left Haiti’s gangs with a vast cache of illegal arms and much greater firepower than the country’s dispirited and underfunded police force.

...

"Joly Germine, a 31-year-old leader of 400 Mawozo, directed specific requests for high-powered weapons via WhatsApp messages sent from a Haitian prison. The requests were made to US citizens in Florida, including Germain’s romantic partner, and the weapons were then stuffed in garbage bags, loaded into large barrels and hidden under “clothes, shoes and Gatorade” ready for shipment.

Anger and Sadness in Tel Aviv

Saturday, on the last night of my just-ended visit to Israel, I attended two adjacent mass public events. 

One was a political demonstration against the leadership of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his governing coalition. The other was a vigil for the kidnapped hostages, living and dead.

In each of these two events, the one Hebrew word you heard more than any other was NOW (עכשיו).  As in "Elections NOW!"  or "Bring them home NOW!"

In the political demonstration, the primary mood expressed by the speakers was anger.  In the vigil, it was sadness.

Below some pictures and a video of a speech with added subtitles in English translation.

From the demonstration:

The signs say "Elections Now!"

The sign (addressed to Bibi) says: "You are the boss.
You are guilty"

From the vigil for the hostages:

Prepared to welcome the hostages home  to Shabbat dinner

x

And one bonus picture, on the road connecting the two gatherings, from the Women Who Wage Peace

Conference in Jerusalem, in solidarity with Israeli academics

 I'm expecting to be back in California later today.  I gave three talks while in Israel, and met with many people, but the proximate cause of my trip was the economics conference organized by Effi Benmelech on behalf of Northwestern's Crown Family Israel Center for Innovation. It was organized as an expression of support for Israeli academics.

Here is the program

Wednesday, March 20 | Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

9:00-9:15 Welcome  Effi Benmelech, Northwestern University

9:15-10:00 Amir Yaron, Governor of the Bank of Israel

10:00-10:15 Break

Macro Session

10:15-11:00 Moving to Fluidity: Regional Growth and Labor Market Churn  Eran Hoffman, Hebrew University

11:00-11:45 Policy Design and Rates of Convergence in Learning Models  Martin Eichenbaum, Northwestern University

11:45-12:45 Lunch

Applied Micro Session

12:45-13:30 Fostering Soft Skills in Active Labor Market Programs: Evidence from a Large-Scale RCT  Analia Schlosser, Tel Aviv University

13:30-14:15 Decomposing the Rise of the Populist Radical Right  Roee Levy Tel Aviv University

14:15-14:30 Break

14:30-15:15 Why Has Construction Productivity Stagnated? The Role of Land-Use Regulation  Edward Glaeser, Harvard University

15:15-15:30 Break

Matching Markets Session

15:30-16:15 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part I  Al Roth, Stanford University

16:15-17:00 Organ Allocation for Transplants, Around the World and in Israel: Part II  Itai Ashlagi, Stanford University

Thursday, March 21 Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem

Industrial Organization Session

9:15-10:00 Selling Subscriptions Liran Einav, Stanford University

10:00-10:15 Break

10:15-11:00 An Empirical Analysis of Merger Efficiencies  Alon Eizenberg, Hebrew University

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:00 Pharmaceutical Advertising in Dynamic Equilibrium  Ariel Pakes, Harvard University

12:00-13:00 Lunch

Economic History Session

13:00-13:45 Land Privatization and Business Credit: The Response of Bankruptcies to Land Enclosures in England 1750-1830  Karine van der Beek, Ben-Gurion University

13:45-14:00 Break

14:00-14:45 Diversity, Pluralism and Tolerance: The Roots of Economic Progress  Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

14:45-15:00 Break

Experimental Economics

15:00-15:45 Describing Deferred Acceptance to Participants: Experimental Analysis  Yannai Gonczarowski, Harvard University

15:45 Adjourn

Kidney biopsies can be predicted pretty well, which could speed organ allocation

 Here's a big international collaboration suggesting that AI assisted predictions about kidney biopsies are effective, and could speed acceptance of deceased donor organs for transplant.

 "A Machine Learning-Driven Virtual Biopsy System For Kidney Transplant Patients." Nature Communications 15, no. 1 (2024): 554.  by Daniel Yoo, Gillian Divard, Marc Raynaud, Aaron Cohen, Tom D. Mone, John Thomas Rosenthal, Andrew J. Bentall, Mark D. Stegall, Maarten Naesens, Huanxi Zhang, Changxi Wang, Juliette Gueguen, Nassim Kamar, Antoine Bouquegneau, Ibrahim Batal, Shana M. Coley, John S. Gill, Federico Oppenheimer, Erika De Sousa-Amorim, Dirk R. J. Kuypers, Antoine Durrbach, Daniel Seron, Marion Rabant, Jean-Paul Duong Van Huyen, Patricia Campbell, Soroush Shojai, Michael Mengel, Oriol Bestard, Nikolina Basic-Jukic, Ivana Jurić, Peter Boor, Lynn D. Cornell, Mariam P. Alexander, P. Toby Coates, Christophe Legendre, Peter P. Reese, Carmen Lefaucheur, Olivier Aubert & Alexandre Loupy

From the discussion:

"In this international, multicohort study of kidney transplant biopsies from 17 worldwide centers including the largest Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) in the USA and labeled by expert kidney pathologists, we derived and validated a virtual biopsy system that uses non-invasive and routinely collected donor parameters to predict kidney histological lesions.

...

"Over the past decade, the use of kidneys from older donors with comorbidities has expanded the pool of kidneys, raising the question of whether pathological examination of donated kidneys could help better characterize organ quality or drive inefficiencies in organ allocation22. Additionally, this biopsy procedure needs to be performed and interpreted by trained experts, which is difficult to implement 24/7 . Furthermore, in the USA, the United Network for Organ Sharing policy for organ allocation, recommends the use of KDPI, day-zero biopsy results, and donor characteristics to assess organ quality before transplantation. Despite the importance, the lost time due to this procedure could be precious when the biopsy result is used for allocation purposes as every additional hour of cold ischemia time is highly associated with worse graft outcomes. Therefore, many centers are discouraged from performing day-zero biopsy because it remains an invasive and time-consuming procedure that could increase cold ischemia time."

 

Lysistrata in Kiryat Joel

 Kiryas Joel is a Hasidic community in New York State, in which ancient religious traditions can come into conflict with modern customs.   

Haaretz has the story, about religious activist Adina Sash:

'Call Your Rabbi, Husband': Why These ultra-Orthodox New York Women Are on a 'Sex Strike'.  After hiring a plane to fly a "Free Malky" banner over the Hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel, the ultra-Orthodox feminist activist Adina Sash decided a sex strike by the community's women would be the next step in pressuring a local man to give his wife a religious divorce.  by Rachel Fink

"Sash, who goes by the handle flatbushgirl, is singularly focused on using her platform to call attention to women in the ultra-Orthodox community, of which she considers herself a full-fledged member, whose husbands refuse to give them the Jewish bill of divorce known as a get. According to Jewish law, it is the man who gives the get and the woman who receives it, never the other way around.

"Last week, Sash aimed her sights on the place where, according to her, Jewish women yield the most power: The bedroom. Sash called for Orthodox women to go on a "mikveh strike." According to Jewish law, following menstruation, married women must immerse in a mikveh, or ritual bath, before they can have sex with their husbands – which many do later that night.

...

"She also advocates that the sex strike take place on "mitzvah night," by which she means Friday night. Like engaging in sexual relations directly after the mikveh, many observant Jews give special status to sex on the Sabbath, which relates to the rabbinic obligation to delight in the Sabbath.

...

"According to an Instagram story she posted on the day she announced the current strike, "When your husband says, 'Why?' say, '... Please call your rabbi and figure out a way to help free Malky,'" she wrote.

...

"How is it possible that the rabbis have compassion for men, giving them a way out but not women?" Sash continued. She is referring to a rabbinic loophole called a heter meah rabbanim (literally, permission of 100 rabbis) which allows men to remarry in the rare instance that a wife refuses to receive a get. While this could theoretically result in an "agun," or chained man, the rabbis came up with a solution allowing the man to remarry based on the biblical law that states that a man can have more than one wife. However, since a woman cannot be married to two men, both ancient and modern rabbinical courts are unwilling to apply this exemption to women."

Revisiting the Israel-UAE kidney exchange

 I spoke in Jerusalem yesterday about kidney exchange, and one of the things I talked about is the kidney exchange between Israel and the UAE.  At the time (summer 2021) I was careful not to blog about anything beforehand, because there were delicate political issues, and so I didn't start to tell the story until I returned from the UAE, and I waited until the story appeared in a U.S. newspaper.

I never got around to linking to the stories in the Israeli press, so here are two. via Google translate.

From ynet:

Historical transplant: Shani's kidney will be transplanted into an Abu Dhabi resident, her mother will receive a kidney in Israel  Shani Markowitz of Nesher is expected to go down in history this week as the first Israeli to have her kidney transplanted into the body of a resident of Abu Dhabi. The transplant will be carried out as part of an international crossover program in which an Israeli citizen will also receive a kidney from a resident of the United Arab Emirates. Markowitz: "My goal is for my mother to receive a kidney in exchange." Prof. Eitan Mor, Director of the Sheba Transplantation Center: "It is possible that after the Corona we will meet face to face"  by Adir Yanko, 24.07.21 

and from Mednews Israel

Israel Kidney Crossing Abu Dhabi

"Medical fruits of the peace agreement with the United Arab Emirates: a kidney, donated at the Sheba Hospital, was flown and transplanted in Abu Dhabi, in exchange for a kidney donated in Abu Dhabi and transplanted at the Rambam Hospital

"July 28, 2021 was a historic day for the State of Israel, the Ministry of Health, the National Center for Transplantation and the kidney patients and their families: thanks to the transfer of a kidney in a crossover, from Israel to Abu Dhabi and from Abu Dhabi to Israel, three transplants were performed on this day, two of them in Israel

...

"Dr. Tamar Ashkenazi, director of the National Center for Transplantation and the initiative  [said]of the cooperation: "The program was theoretically born from the moment the Abraham Agreement was signed in September 2020, and from the day the agreement between the Ministries of Health was signed on April 21, 2021, we began to move rapidly towards the agreement on the crossbreeding program. An American company assisted in the agreement which accompanies the program in the Emirates, APKD, along with laboratory data provided to us by the company. The matches were found by Prof. Itai Ashlagi, an Israeli researcher at Stanford, with the help of software he developed and even donated to us. Prof. Ashlagi accompaDr. Tamar Ashkenazi, director of the National Center for Transplantation and the initiativenies us in all the international crosses together with Rona Simon from the transplant center. A great feeling of satisfaction accompanies us. We turned to the next crossovers and to find more matches"

 #########

Here are all my posts on that and related kidney exchanges

Bring Them Home

 I'm in Israel this week, where there are constant reminders of the hostages

at Ben Gurion airport

at Symphony hall

The Impact of prioritization on kidney and liver allocation in Israel

   Israel's  Organ Transplantation Law grants some priority on waiting lists for transplants to candidates who are first-degree relatives of deceased organ donors (i.e. whose family has given permission for someone's deceased organ donation) or who previously registered as organ donors themselves. (There's also a tiny priority for relatives of people who signed organ donor cards...)  Here are two papers that looks at the effect of those priorities on kidney and liver transplants, and how they interact with other priorities on waiting lists for Israeli organs.  

The first paper, on kidneys, concludes that the priorities are effective in reducing waiting time to transplant, and suggests that perhaps these priorities should not be so large compared to other existing priorities (e.g. for time on dialysis), or for priorities that could be established, e.g. for highly sensitized patients (who get high priority in the U.S., for example.)

Mor, Eytan, Meitar Bloom, Ronen Ghinea, Roi Anteby, Ronit Pasvolsky-Gutman, Ron Loewenthal, Ido Nachmani, and Tammy Hod. "The Impact of the Donor Card Holder Prioritization Program on Kidney Allocation in Israel." Transplantation (2024): 10-1097.

Abstract

Background: Since 2014, as part of a priority program within the Israeli Transplant Law, additional points were given to waitlisted candidates with donor cards. We assessed the impact on deceased donor kidney allocation.

Methods: This study enrolled all patients older than 18 y who underwent deceased donor kidney transplantation (January 2016–December 2019). Data were obtained from the National HLA Tissue Laboratory registry at the Sheba Medical Center. Patients were grouped by donor card status (ADI group) (not signed, 0 points; relative signed, 0.1 points; patient signed, 2 points; and relative donated, 9 points). The primary outcome was waiting time until kidney transplantation with and without the additional score.

Results: Four hundred forty-four patients underwent kidney transplantation during the study period: 281 (63%) were donor card holders (DCH) and 163 (37%) were not DCH. DCH with extra points waited 68.0 (±47.0) mo on average, compared with 94.6 (±47.3) mo for not DCH (P < 0.001). Donor card signers had a shorter time until transplant in a multivariable model. Without extra points, 145 recipients (32.6%) would have missed organs allocated to higher-scored candidates. Allocation changes occurred in 1 patient because of an additional 0.1 points, in 103 candidates because of an additional 2 points, and in 41 candidates because of an additional 9 points.

Conclusions: Additional DCH scores improved allocation and reduced waiting time for donor card signers and those with donating relatives. To enhance fairness, consideration should be given to reducing the score weight of this social criterion and raising scores for other factors, especially dialysis duration.

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There are many fewer liver transplants than kidney transplants, and the effect of priority is less clear:

Ashkenazi, Tamar, Avraham Stoler, and Eytan Mor. "The effect of priority given to donor card holders on the allocation of livers for transplant—evidence from 7 years of the Israeli priority program." Transplantation 106, no. 2 (2022): 299-307.

Abstract

Background. The Israeli Transplant Law grants priority in organ allocation to patients signing a donor card. Liver transplant candidates get additional 2 points on their Model for End Stage Liver Disease score for signing a donor card, 0.1 points for a relative holding a card, and 5 points if a relative donated an organ. We studied the effect of the priority program on waiting list mortality and allocation changes due to priority.

Methods. Using Israeli Transplant data of 531 adult liver transplant candidates with chronic liver disease listed between 2012 and 2018 we compared waitlist mortality and transplant rate of candidates with and without priority. Then we analyzed liver allocations resulting from additional priority points and followed outcome of patients who were skipped in line.

Results. Of the 519 candidates, 294 did not sign a donor card, 82 signed, 140 had a relative sign, and for 3, a relative donated an organ. The rates of waitlist mortality in these 4 groups were 22.4%, 0%, 21.4%, and 0%, respectively, and the transplant rates were 50%, 59.8%, 49.3%, and 100%, respectively. Of the 30 patients who were skipped because of priority, 24 subsequently underwent transplant, 2 are on the waiting list, and 4 died within 0.75, 1.75, 7, and 17 mo.

Conclusions. The 2 points added to the Model for End Stage Liver Disease score were associated with lower waitlist mortality and higher transplant rate for candidates signing a donor card without significantly affecting access to transplant during allocation. Further research and consideration of optimal policy when granting priority for candidates signing a donor card should continue.

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Earlier:

Stoler, Avraham,  Judd B. Kessler, Tamar Ashkenazi, Alvin E. Roth, Jacob Lavee, “Incentivizing Authorization for Deceased Organ Donation with Organ Allocation Priority: the First Five Years,” American Journal of Transplantation, Volume 16, Issue 9, September 2016,  2639–2645. 

 Stoler, Avraham, Judd B. Kessler, Tamar Ashkenazi, Alvin E. Roth, Jacob Lavee, “Incentivizing Organ Donor Registrations with Organ Allocation Priority,”, Health Economics, April 2016 Volume: 26   Issue: 4   Pages: 500-510   APR 2017