Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had an editorial on the unelected, bureaucratic HHS Agency, which is doing it's central government thing, trying to override common sense.
Having had an autologous stem cell transplant - essentially the same thing as a bone marrow transplant - but given back my own cells - it's possible that in the future I could need a donor transplant. If my lymphoma were to come back, that could be one of the options (which of course, I'd like to avoid).
Bone marrow donation is very simple - akin to giving blood - and the issue is, can people be compensated for their donation.
Rationing Bone Marrow The feds want to control who can donate despite shortages.
The technique is less invasive than egg donation and has none of the risks associated with kidney or liver donation. Unlike blood donors, however, marrow donors cannot be compensated, which has led to shortages for patients with life threatening blood diseases and a waiting list of some 13,900.
In 2009, the Institute for Justice sued on behalf of Maine resident Doreen Flynn, whose three children have a disease called Fanconi anemia and will most likely need bone marrow transplants to survive. In 2012's Flynn v. Holder, the Ninth Circuit agreed, noting that new technology and the ease of marrow donation put the ban wholly out of step with the purpose of the organ donation law.
The Justice Department petitioned for rehearing en banc, insisting that marrow transplants should "not be subject to market forces." When the Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case, the Administration mobilized HHS, which has proposed a rule that would overturn the Ninth Circuit and define marrow extracted from the bloodstream as an organ. The purpose, says the rule, is to "ban the commodification" of bone marrow used in transplants, "encourage altruistic donations, and decrease the likelihood of disease transmission resulting from paid donations."
None of these arguments stands up to scrutiny. If banning donor compensation encouraged altruistic donations, it would already have done so. The ban has been in place for decades and the result is chronic bone-marrow shortages, which have disproportionately affected minorities who have a harder time finding a donor match.
The claim that compensation would increase "disease transmission" is also a straw man. The thousands of people on the waiting list, including many with leukemia and blood cancers or anemia, often need marrow donation to stay alive. Any marginal increase in risk pales next to the certainty of death.
Treating bone marrow as a public resource distributed by the federal government hasn't worked. The Administration's campaign to reimpose the compensation ban and overrule the courts is another example of its penchant for political and bureaucratic control over medical decisions. The rule is open for public comment until December 2, and patients and doctors ought to express their opposition on moral and humanitarian grounds.
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