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JumpCrisscross • yesterday at 9:58 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> Legalized organ markets would go a long way towards this end

No, it wouldn't.

The only organ you can donate in whole is a kidney. Estimates for a U.S. clearing price are around $15,000 [1]. (Higher in Iran, but mostly absorbed by brokers [2].) For comparison, between CARES, the 2020 supplemental and ARP the median American adult received around $3k ($5k including child benefits). That didn't go a third of "a long way towards" eliminating all poverty.

In exchange you create a monetary incentive for donors to lie about disease status and drug use.

[1] https://stanford.edu/~alroth/AMNews_Jan.28,2008.pdf

[2] https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/journals/transplant-in...


Replies

tt24 • today at 12:28 AM

> In exchange you create a monetary incentive for donors to lie about disease status and drug use.

I’ll take this solvable problem in exchange for the much more complex problem of there not being enough organs to go around

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