People didn’t believe me when I said I’d praise Trump for the good things he did. Well now it’s time. Here’s the WSJ:
Arya Majumder would have celebrated his 19th birthday last month. Instead he died of cancer in 2010, his condition exacerbated by a scarcity of bone-marrow donors. . . .
Other families may be spared the same life-upending sorrow because last week the Department of Health and Human Services withdrew a proposed Obama -era regulation that would have prohibited compensation for bone-marrow donation. About 11,000 ailing Americans are currently searching the national marrow registry, hoping to find a compatible donor. This year at least 3,000 people will die waiting for a transplant. Others, like Arya, must settle for an inexact match, which can cause lifelong health complications or prove fatal. . . .
The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act prohibited payment for organ donors, and bone marrow was included, though it regenerates like blood, eggs or plasma. Represented by the Institute for Justice in 2012, the mother of three girls suffering from a condition known as Fanconi anemi, which often impairs bone marrow function, won a lawsuit against the federal government to allow compensation.
But the Obama Administration then wrote new rules to recriminalize payment for marrow, and HHS sat on the pending regulation for four years, leaving sick patients and their families in limbo. The regulatory uncertainty deflated the interest of entrepreneurs seeking to invest in much-needed marrow-supply services, as well as of top-tier researchers who wanted to study the effectiveness of compensation.
Great news for utilitarians!
HT: Frank McCormick