The economics of organ vending

The lede:

Nearly 100,000 Americans are waiting for an organ transplant. Every day, the wait for 17 of those people ends in death.

It is a wait that could be drastically shortened or even eliminated if a market for live and cadaveric organs were allowed to operate, according to a paper co-authored by Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary S. Becker, PhD, and published last year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

The study comes on the heels of what observers say is slow but steady progress in breaking down opposition to testing the idea of financial incentives in an effort to combat an organ shortage growing by 5% each year. But resistance among many in the transplant community is still fierce, as other efforts such as paired donation exchanges begin to take off.

The whole shebang.