Law and Economics

Organ Transplants

There is an excellent article on the history and prospects of organ transplantation in today's New York Times, available here.  The article indicates that physicians in Louisville and Utrecht will soon try to transplant a face.  I will have much more to write about organ transplantation soon, but let me note that the article indicates that this year there have been more than 87,000 people who have needed a transplanted organ and only 10,600 people who have donated an organ this year.  The article suggests that the principal means by which this excess demand is being addressed are by trying to dampen the demand by improving medical care so that a transplant is unnecessary and by looking to other species, such as pigs, and to manufactured organs as a source of transplants. 

TSU

Organ Transplants

I have been meaning to link to another blog that I read every day, Marginal Revolution.  Tyler Cown and Alex Tabbarok do a marvelous job of bringing economics to bear on interesting public policy issues.  Tyler's entry today contains the fascinating fact or conjecture that 95 percent of all music sales in the People's Republic of China are pirated copies. 

But today also has a wonderful entry on organ transplantation, including a link to a fascinating new paper by Gary Becker and Julio Elias on easing the shortage of kidneys for transplantation.  I'll have much more to say on organ transplantation in a future entry here.  In the meantime, one can't do better than to read Alex's entry today and the trackbacks to his previous work on that topic. 

TSU