I continue the excerpts from my Medical Self-Defense article, by rebutting arguments that banning payment for organs is necessary to avoid very grave harms. In this post, I deal with the argument that banning payment is needed to keep poor providers from being improperly exploited. In earlier posts, I've discussed the risk of organ robbery, and the argument that banning payment is needed to keep rich patients from "jumping the queue." In future posts, I deal with the argument that organ payment bans are needed to avoid supposedly inherently improper "commodification" of the human body, and with some other arguments that have come up in the comments. As before, please recall that the footnotes are available here, so if you wonder where I got some of the data, you might check there first.
Note also that this argument is a small part of what must be at most a 30-page essay; I thus can't get into it in too much detail. At the same time, I may have room to add a few paragraphs here or there, so if you think there are important items that need adding, I'd love to hear about that.
Some argue that allowing organ sales would unduly pressure poor providers to put their health and their lives at risk. Yet the risk is modest. Giving a kidney carries a 0.03% risk of death or irreversible coma, a less than 2% risk of complications, and some unknown but not high increase in susceptibility to kidney disease. Giving part of a liver (livers regenerate, so giving part is possible) has been associated with a 0.25% incidence of provider death, plus some risk of nonfatal complications. Marrow donation is safe, though temporarily painful.
Such risks may justify mandatory counseling, waiting periods, and requirements that part of the compensation include insurance against medical complications. [Footnote: These regulations may slightly increase the cost of organs, but likely not enough to substantially burden recipients’ self-defense rights.] But they surely don’t justify the current ban, which applies even to compensation for cadaveric organs. [Footnote: Allowing compensation for cadaveric organs would actually help protect the health of living donors, because it would make living donations less necessary.] And in my view they are too small to justify even a ban limited to organs provided by the living. If someone thinks the prospect of making tens of thousands of dollars is worth a small health risk, the government’s interest in protecting him against being overtempted by the money shouldn’t suffice to trump the medical self-defense rights I’ve discussed.
Yet even if I’m wrong, recognizing that the organ sales ban limits patients’ rights should invalidate such a serious burden on their rights if the law can prevent the harm through lighter burdens. For instance, the law might exclude living providers who we think are unduly tempted by a $30,000 per-organ payment -- say, the very poor (perhaps they’re too desperate), young adults aged 18 to 24 (perhps they’re too present-centered), or poor parents of minor children (perhaps they may feel unduly pressured to risk their health for the sake of feeding their family). [Footnote: Even under the current system, there’s often strong family pressure on people to donate organs for relatives (even ones to whom the provider might not feel close). This isn’t identical to the pressure of an offered $30,000, but in many ways it might be stronger. Allowing compensation for organs will diminish this pressure, as more non-relative organs become available.] Better a small decrease in potential organ providers than the large decrease caused by today’s total compensation ban. And even these exclusions may leave enough providers to supply the medical self-defense needs of all Americans whose organs are failing.
True, some might balk at such limitations. Aren’t 21-year-olds adult enough that we shouldn’t treat them as second-class citizens who can’t make intelligent choices? Why should very poor people, or people who are trying to improve their children’s lives, be denied a money-making option that richer people have -- and be denied it precisely because the money is especially valuable to the poor and to parents?
But if such objections are right, they only show the problem with a paternalistic system that interferes with recipients’ self-defense rights and providers’ freedom of choice. The response to these objections should be to let all adult, competent would-be organ providers decide whether to sell their organs -- as they now have the right to decide whether to give the organs away -- not to bar everyone from doing so.
All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- "Singapore to Compensate Kidney Donors":
- Professor Robert Nagel Criticizes My Medical Self-Defense Article,
- Be Careful Believing Your Own Metaphors:...
- Commercial Fishing and Paid Organ Provision:
- Payment for Organs, Medical Self-Defense, and the Risk that the Poor Would Be Unduly Pressured Into Selling Organs:
- Payments for Organs, Medical Self-Defense, and the Risk of the Rich Buying Up All Available Organs:...
- Lethal Self-Defense and What It Tells Us About Medical Self-Defense:
- The Two Abortion Rights, and Therapeutic Abortions as Medical Self-Defense:
- Medical Self-Defense, Prohibited Experimental Therapies, and Payment for Organs:
As I've said before, in the end for me it's a value judgment. I don't think that human body parts, from the living or the dead, should be legitimate objects of commerce. While I've tried explaining some of the rational arguments to be made against it, in the end I am not going to be persuaded on this subject. I'm against it, and I think most people will be against it no matter how much of a legalistic argument you make in favor of it.
Also, I think your quoted rates are a bit low. Keep in mind that having an organ removed isn't minor surgery - on top of the risk of death, complications, and pain, you're going to be out of the work force for a while too. I sure as heck wouldn't sell a kidney for thirty grand, and frankly, I'm not exactly rolling in dough here myself.
Finally, if your organs have a commodity value, it will not take long before some enterprising lawyer sues a debtor and claims those organs as an economic asset. Not acceptable! You may insert a "pound of flesh" joke here.
Oh, you just want to have sex with them!
That's what everybody says when I suggest that about 14 year olds.
The general principle that individuals should have bodily autonomy is a reasonable one, as is the belief that human affairs benefits from economic trade, in this case, money for organs.
From a governance perspective, however, when society begins to quantify the financial worth of constituent pieces of a person, we debase the value supposedly invested in us by our mere humanity. I am a human being and inherently deserving of respect for that fact. Our moral and even legal code depends on it. Chipping away at that foundation undermines the value system that we share. Would a more efficient society allow the sale of organs? Perhaps. But that question presupposes the equivalence of efficiency and superiority. What would a better society do? Keeping the value of a human being sacrosanct, even if it means placing certain actions off limits, is probably better for us, similar to the way that an economy benefits its participants with some constraints on the deployment of capital.
As for the market price, nobody knows what it is. But knowing exactly what's involved, $30,000 does not strike me as especially low. There are much, much less pleasant ways to earn $30,000. Ever been in a chicken-packing plant?
As for the complaint that Eugene's argument is "technical and legalistic," I thought that was the whole point of a law review article. Philosophers, economists, religious scholars, and policy wonks have addressed the question from other perspectives.
No one is required to prove him wrong, but if he starts with something we all agree with and then comes to an unsettling conclusion, either something is wrong with his logic, or we don't really agree with the premise, or his conclusion, however unsettling, is correct. If the latter, perhaps we need to re-examine our own thinking and feelings. I'd hate for people to die while waiting for an organ because "I just don't FEEL like it's right for them to be able to buy one."
Donating an organ is an act that helps out individuals and society. In my opinion giving people who are willing to donate organs some sort of reward is good for the donor, the recipient and society.
The real problem for live-donor organ sales is that the amounts being bandied about sound large, but they probably ail to capture the longterm of the sold organ to the donor. Half the recipient's earnings per year for life begins to approach reasonable compensation for organ sales from living donors (in my mind, at least). I don't think that an open market would come to that sort of equilibrium price (by far), since I doubt that most people are capable of reasoning about the value of their organs in the grand scheme of things. It seems to me that few donors will effectively internalize the long-term cost of selling an organ, and that since the associated risks are entirely external to the buyer, the market for organs is likely to ridiculously inefficient. Also, since the effects of organ sales are not likley to be felt by sellers (assuming that the up-front costs are low) for decades in most cases, traditional feedback mechanisms are unlikely to drive prices appropriately high.
PatHMV,
If orgns are not legitimate objects of commerce, is medical care a legitimate object? Is cutting out a tumor a legitimate object of commerce?
mn489,
The risks of organ donation are not a function of the price paid to the donor. I note we allow people to freely accept risk that is far greater than that of organ donation. Should we adopt a policy of prohibiting all risk, or only prohibiting risk of organ donation? If that is the case, then risk is not a decision variable.
AMDG,
I suppose asigning a value to organs might debase the value we see in our humanity, but that would require that we have a monetary basis for that valuation. We assign monetary value to human labor. Does that debase our humanty? We assign monetary value to a lost life. Does that debase our humnity? We even sell the education that teaches about the value of human life.
I note that food, shelter, and clothing are necessary for human life. They are abundant in our society precisely because we do asisgn a monetary value to them. Organs are not available because we refuse to assign a monetary value.
It's a scavenger process.
Someone in need convincing someone without money that he should sell his organs for money. An education process should start to explain to poor people why they should not "sell themselves" for mammon.
I expect the Catholics would do this -- it's fits into concepts of bodily integrity, and human worth. Much like there are reasons you cannot "buy" all poor people as sex workers, or convince them to provide their children for adoption.
The answer to to change attitudes in transplanting cultures toward donation and paying for human parts. If you cannot convince your own, I suspect you will pay a price when you come into some poorer areas waving a fistful of dollars. Harvesting healthy organs -- what happens years later near the end of the donor's life if it turns out, "Damn, turns out that "extra" kidney wasn't just a designer's error."
Education progams aimed at the supply stock, designed to inform them to pass up the instant cash gratification, will prove effective to the detriment of the business types. Better to meet your own supply needs, and not look elsewhere.
Virginia Postrel makes the error in thiking that organ donations are risk free. An "easy" $30,000, or a year (at union wages) working in a chicken packing plant?
If we think buying their spare body parts is the way to solve or even help people in struggling countries, God help us all.
The problem I have with this argument is that it falsely separates the individual from the government to rail against paternalism. But if we instead think of the law as simply a reflection of our ideas and desires codified and backed by the force of sanction (or given community respect), or some other expression of self-governance, then there is no paternalism; there's just us communally making decisions for ourselves.
Me preventing myself from being tempted is quite different than someone else preventing me from being tempted. The latter is disrespectful to my autonomy; the former is rather like me choosing to have an alarm clock -- there is the me that wants to sleep in and the me that wants to get up, and I know that the me that wants to get up has the better instinct, which is why I have the alarm clock to wake up the me that wants to sleep in. It is also why I have hidden the alarm clock under the bed, so that the me that wants to sleep in can't hit the snooze button.
So if the medical self-defense rights are not in tension with the government's interests, then the balance of financial gain to health risk simply reflects the amount of temptation we think appropriate for ourselves. In which case, there is nothing to be trumped: there is no "paternalistic system that interferes with recipients’ self-defense rights and providers’ freedom of choice." We could "let all adult, competent would-be organ providers decide whether to sell their organs," but we clearly do not want that. Just like we do not want to get up late, and so purchase alarm clocks.
I suppose Volokh has the burden of persuading us that we should want something that we do not want. I do not think positing a fictional paternalistic authority that we can theoretically get mad at does the trick.
Organs are not available because we do not invest in cloning.
But would you want the government, in which I, too, have a vote, to tell you what kind of alarm clock to buy, where to put it, and at what time you should set it for?
Or, to put it another way, preventing me from selling an organ is not you buying yourself an alarm clock. It's you buying ME an alarm clock and putting it under my bed so I can't hit snooze. And THAT I'd object to. I'd also object to you outlawing alarm clocks. I'd rather vote for the choice that lets me pick whether to buy an alarm clock or not, and what to do with it once I do buy it.
Now, YOU could write up some sort of contract (perhaps binding) that says "any attempts by Robert Jackson to sell an organ shall be null and void" and that might take away your temptation if you wish your temptation to be taken away. But making it the law for everyone writes that contract for me too.
One should look at history of buying body parts/blood/organs to see what would result.
One: The pressure on very poor people to donate would be intense. Here in the Philippines, we lost 1000 people in a stampede for a quiz show, because they saw this as the only way to get rich. Similarly, such poor people would be easily exploited by con men who will dazzle them with the idea of easy wealth. This is probably a third world problem, but if the money is good, one can imagine people coming to the US on visas to donate organs for money.
Two: Experience in India etc. shows that often the people donating get a pittance, and the middle man is the one who gets rich.
Three: A doctor from India working in the US went back to his country and interviewed those who donated organs, and found that they were NOT financially better off. The fees were small, often spent quickly, and often the patient left with poor health from the operation, so they couldn't work (often the poor donors are laborers who after the surgery lacked stamina or had health problems that made it hard to continue at hard labor). The end result was actually bad for the donors.
Four: Donors in the USA would probably not be donating out of such desperation; like blood or sperm or other schemes they often targeted students who partly did it for money but also partly from altruism...the money was not really the primary reason, but helped. (When I was in medical school, donating sperm, blood, or plasma was a common practice for extra money). Yet if money was involved, could the donors be screened for mental and physical illness?
Five: Even in the USA, corruption is a possibility. We learned this lesson when in the days before HIV, Blood banks often bought blood from slum dwellers (including drunks/addicts). This resulted in the spread of Hepatitis B and C...there is a scandal about Arkansas prisons selling blood for plasma that caused a lot of hepatitic C in Canada in the 1980's and 1990's...
Six: once organ donation become associated with money, people will stop signing donor cards for fear of being left to die so their organs can be removed by greedy doctors, or by greedy relatives. "Law and order" had an episode of this, so it's probably an urban legend, but urban legends do influence behavior. The end result would be fewer organs.
I do like Eugene's self defense arguement for experimental drugs. Its a pitty we have to petition the state to take actions to save our own lives.
Did I miss the discussion about how groups of people or the state have right to impose their will on voluntary exchange? Yeah, get in line behind the medical marijuana folks.
If it's truly a one-time organ transplant process, undertaken in self defense, wouldn't the recipient take a civil disobedience approach, much like some of the medical marijuana proponents presumably are doing? Ask for mitigation, if caught?
There is no "right" for society to condon selling body parts.
Amazingly, AMDG believes that the above logically entails:
1. Therefore, others should prohibit me from voluntary efforts to save my life, and
2. Therefore, others should prohibit me from voluntary efforts to finance my goals by helping people in need.
Actually, the opposite is true. Does AMDG really think if he were dying from lack of an available kidney he would want to be told, "Fortunately, by limiting your options and precipitating your death, we are preserving your dignity as well as the dignity of those who would have, like your doctors, been willing to help you if compensated."
Substitute "sex" for "organ" in this equation and you'll find that the vast majority of the American public holds a similarly amazing belief.
Tip of the hat to George Carlin for this concept, of course. The link is well worth a read -- amazingly, in this same standup routine, he talks about organ donation programs! What are the odds?!?
It's really unfortunate things are this way. I'm convinced I could make a fortune if prostitution were legalized. I'm just that good-looking, what can I say (here's a photo).
And in this new regime, perhaps I could supplement my enormous income by selling chunks of my liver. Apparently it would regenerate, although perhaps not often enough for me to afford a new car each year.
It is often true that rules designed to help people in general may harm someone in a specific case. That person who is harmed could then say "wait a minute! How can you claim it's for my benefit when you're obviously hurting me with this rule?" Such an objection isn't valid.
For instance, sometimes guilty people get let free because of the exclusionary rule. Can you imagine someone being attacked by a criminal saying "what do you mean you exclude illegal evidence for my benefit? If you hadn't excluded illegal evidence the guy who attacked me would have been in jail right now!"
Unless your belief is that the poor people are too stupid to know what is good for them you must assume any 'coercion' comes from the fact that the money is really worth more to them than the organ. Yet if this is true the real harm is all in their poverty not in the organ donation poverty.
I think many of these objections have more to do with the lies we tell ourselves than any real problem with the scheme. We would like to believe that being poor isn't that bad and that we don't have a moral responsibility to do something about it. Then when a program comes along that lets poor people make a stark choice showing that having more money is worth more to them than an organ we get uncomfortable.
--
A far more moderate organ payment scheme is possible though. Give everyone who agrees to be an organ donor (agrees is a fashion where their family can't decide not to donate after their death) that year a hundred dollar deduction on their taxes. Sure we can even let people bail out but once you bail out once you would be barred from ever joining the program again. Of course such a scheme would have to be government run but even such a small scheme would likely radically increase the number of organs availible.
But, what if I just want to sell my hair for a wig? Is all humanity diminished? Perhaps the dignity diminishes only if there is signficant pain and discomfort for which the donor is paid? I suppose that would mean the dignity of all humanity increases if the poor man goes through pain and discomfort, then walks away poorer (Is poorer a word? It looks awful.)
Again, here comes the false separation of "government" over "people". "Government" doesn't work the way you suggest. We don't take a mass uneducated vote. The alarm clocks permitted for sale are those approved by the agency that oversees the safety and relability of alarm clocks, e.g., The Alarm Clock Agency ("TACA"), and the officials at TACA are experts in alarm clock science who act on the public behalf. So there is no paternalistic mandating of "You must buy this kind of clock!" It's that every kind of the clock on the market meets the basic standards set by TACA and so falls within an acceptable range of quality. We have TACA because we don't want alarm clocks that explode when we hit the snooze button, just to take an example. And we all agree that it is a good goal, otherwise TACA -- an independent, non-partisan agency -- would not exist.
The humor is appreciated, but is there a point to it? If 21 isn't old enough, what age would be old enough?
My experience as a parent and grandparent is that no one will ever grow up as long as they are "protected" from making bad choices. And if you think it might be a good idea to thus protect people for life even if it keeps them somewhat childish, remember that this will affect the people making the decisions, too. We've already had far too many examples of Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents acting like less than mature adults.
I think many of these objections have more to do with the lies we tell ourselves than any real problem with the scheme. We would like to believe that being poor isn't that bad and that we don't have a moral responsibility to do something about it. Then when a program comes along that lets poor people make a stark choice showing that having more money is worth more to them than an organ we get uncomfortable.
Well said. I would add that the main point of this argument -- the one about the widely practiced major self-delusion -- doesn't even require the assumption that one has any moral responsibility to help poor people.
This self-delusion can be best seen when one considers the fact that sometimes the government itself puts poor people into situations where they would be vastly better off if they could sell their organs -- and then prohibits them from making such a beneficial trade. For example, if you're arrested under false suspicion for a serious crime and you don't have enough money to hire a decent lawyer, you're screwed big time. In such a situation, I would very gladly give a kidney in exchange for a sum that would give me a decent chance of getting out of trouble. And although this isn't very probable to happen to any individual person, only very naive people believe that the total number of such cases is negligibly small.
But as "logicnazi" pointed out above, people like to delude themselves into thinking that one could never get into a situation where one faces much worse prospects than losing a kidney. No wonder that even fewer people are capable of grasping that people can be forced into such situations by the same institutions that enforce the ban on organ selling. Talk about hypocrisy.
It depends what you mean by forced. The criminal procedures hit hardest those populations that do not vote, because there is unlikely to be any electoral backlash for their implementation. It is absurd to criticize government policy that harms you at Stage 2 when you could have participated in the formation of that policy at Stage 1 so that it would not cause you any harm.
It is also absurd to claim the "government" made you sacrifice your human dignity in exchange for attoney's fees for a non-public defender (nevermind the fact that many public defenders are super-brilliant top-law school grads). If selling your organs violated your sense of human dignity, you wouldn't have sold them. That you did suggests you never had the sense of human dignity that you now claim. Moreover, the government pays for a public defender. It also pays for whomever investigated you, someone who works in an office that investigates actual criminals, thus keeping you safe.
I am not sure how you can say with certainty that the value of public safety and public defenders is outweighed by a conception of human dignity that mandates selling one's organs and neglecting to vote.
For that matter, what about organs that can be sold while the person is still alive? Would it be impossible to file for bankruptcy because you still have some assets (organs) that you haven't sold? Will the value of someone's organs be considered as an asset in determining if they are eligible for financial aid at a school? Or for welfare? How are the organs divided up in a divorce? (Imagine a situation where one party gets a disease during the marriage rendering his/her organs worthless.) If you owe a lot of money, could a creditor legally confiscate your organs? (Of course, they wouldn't just knock you out and take the organs; they'd get a court order and you'd be jailed until you agree to provide them.)
If you would agree to a law like that, well, as the joke goes, we've already established what you are and we're just arguing over the price. Banning even some people from donating organs on the grounds that they are unduly tempted admits that there is such a thing as undue temptation. Once you admit that, then whether you think that only ages 24 and under are unduly tempted, or all ages, is merely arguing about the exact extent of a phenomenon that you already agreed exists.
This is related to a problem I described earlier for a completely different reason.
There are things which we accept which benefit people overall, but which may cause harm to specific individuals; and the prime example of that is the criminal justice system. If you have a criminal justice system, innocent people will be hurt--but if you don't, different innocent people will be hurt by the criminals that you don't catch.
So it's not really fair to claim that the government has made anyone worse off by sending innocent people through the criminal justice system. Individual people may be worse off, but other, more numerous, individual people would be worse off without it.
Ken Arromdee: "It is often true that rules designed to help people in general may harm someone in a specific case. That person who is harmed could then say "wait a minute! How can you claim it's for my benefit when you're obviously hurting me with this rule?" Such an objection isn't valid."
The key words, Ken, are "voluntary" and "dignity". Most would agree that one component of human dignity, for an adult, includes autonomy. Treating someone as a ward who can't be trusted to make "dignified" decisions on his own behalf is, itself, an affront to his dignity.
So far, we have been manipulating the variable "money". It is socially acceptable, it seems, to choose to give away one's kidney for free, but not for money. Can we also manipulate the variable "choose"? If it's socially acceptable to choose to give away one's kidney, can human dignity be enhanced by forcing other's to give away their kidneys? Isn't a government powerful enough to say people should die who could be saved by prohibiting kidney sales also powerful enough to say people should be saved who would have died by mandating kidney donation?
Nonsense.
We don't indenture able-bodied debtors to their creditors when the judgment is entered and hold them in jail until they agree to dig the creditor's ditches. Even if you have the physical ability to dig ditches and could even hold down a physical job, if you choose not to do so nobody forces you to work rather than go bankrupt. If you do obtain such a job we do garnishee your wages, and I suppose if there's a judgment the creditor could garnishee the organ fee [thus reducing the incentive to actually sell a kidney], but there is little danger of being held in contempt if you don't sell a kidney to pay a judgment.
Having said that, I must admit that there is one exception. In ordinary debtor/creditor law the debtor is garnisheed based on what he actually earns. In alimony and child support situations he must based on what some court thinks he could earn, and if he is laid off he has to convince some judge to reduce his payment -- at considerable expense -- or he can in fact end up in jail. This needs to change. The post above calling organs an asset to be divided up at divorce is not salient because marital law always considers assets you had before you were married to be yours alone, not subject to division, but there is risk of some rogue judge ordering your parts sold to pay alimony.
-dk
Asking what I would say or do if placed in a desperate, life-threatening situation is a poor way to determine what is right, or even what I think is right. The relevance here is theoretical but I put the question to you: how many meals would you have to miss before you began considering a desperate act? If you were to stop eating tomorrow, could you defend today what you might be willing to do for food next week?
The point has been made, in references to unknown long-term health problems, the limited benefits in practice, and the similarities to prostitution, that organ donation has potentially grave and far-reaching consequences, not all of which are immediate. Asking us to weigh the abstract societal harms against an immediate personal benefit is unwise. Instead, we should make this decision after careful consideration. Placing certain actions outside the scope of legality is a way to keep our basest urges in check.
Moreover, the sale of organs is a policy choice and does not exist in a vaccum; there are better ways to help the poor than granting them the dubious benefit of selling their bodies to the highest bidder.
Have you seen this?
CNN article on kidney market in Pakistan
Someone who's been falsely imprisoned has certainly lost his autonomy, which means I could make the same argument about a criminal justice system. Both a criminal justice system and a ban on organ selling violate the autonomy of a certain number of people who would not wish to have that done to them. But we accept that, because these policies are overall beneficial.
If you sell an organ, are you doing a job? Or are you selling a piece of property?
We certainly *do* confiscate property from debtors.
I'm not an attorney, but as far as I can tell through a Google search, property from before the marriage may sometimes become community property if both spouses contribute to its upkeep. It wouldn't be hard to decide that both spouses have contributed to the upkeep of one spouse's organs.
The difference, Ken, is that we don't set up a system DESIGNED to FALSELY imprison people. FALSE imprisonment is a recognized design flaw in a system designed to imprison those who truly violated other people's rights. Therefore it is off point to compare this to a system, like organ-sale prohibition, that IS *designed* to limit one's autonomy and dignity.
In other words, we accept, given human error, that a system designed to protect us against violence by imprisoning people who commit violence against others will occasionally falsely imprison someone. But the deaths associated with organ-sale prohibition, and the loss of autonomy and dignity associated with the prohibition, are NOT design flaws in a system geared to achieve something else. This is PRECISELY what the system sets out to achieve.
You making a decision for me is paternalistic, by definition, whether or not you slap the label "community" on it. I didn't ask your opinion and didn't authorize you to make a decision for me.
We do indeed.We don't "all" agree on any such thing. You seem to confuse the majority with everybody.
Like many arguments, this depends on exactly how tyou phrase your characterization of the issue.
I could just as well say that preventing the selling of organs is only intended to accomplish some goal that helps people other than the ones being prevented from selling organs, and limiting people's autonomy is only a side effect of preventing that, not a design goal. (Exactly what the goal is depends on the particular argument for the ban.)
I've been inquired in a previous whether anybody had figures on organ donation supply and demand. You say that the best we could hope for from donations from the deceased is double what we currently get. You also say this wouldn't put a dent in the current need. Can you provide some actual figures for these conclusions? Thanks.