Unlike a kidney, bone marrow can replace itself and is therefore considered a $$non$-$rival$$ good, meaning that use by one individual does not reduce the opportunity for another to use it; thus, it meets the definition of a public good.

True

False

Hemeos is aimed at one of the most pressing problems in medicine: the shortage of bone$-$marrow donors to combat deadly blood diseases. Thousands of Americans are waiting for a lifesaving donor, and thousands more have died waiting. Marrow donors provide blood stem cells, which reproduce continuously in the patient and restore the ability to make healthy blood. Most donations use a process called apheresis, which is akin to donating blood or plasma and far less invasive than donating an organ.

Despite the ease of donating, thousands of patients with leukemia or other blood$-$related disorders are desperately searching for donors because a specific genetic match is required. Even when a potential match is identified on the national donor registry, which is maintained for the federal government by the nonprofit National Marrow Donor Program, more than $50\%$ of prospective donors are unwilling or unavailable to donate.

A health$-$care startup, Hemeos, plans to revolutionize donor recruitment by taking one simple step: compensating donors with a check for around $$2,000.$ As with every other valuable thing in the world, we will get more marrow cells when we pay for them. It$$s Econ $101.$ Hermeos$$ research indicates that compensating donors will reduce costs to patients and hospitals, provide better$-$matching marrow cells more quickly, and increase donor follow$-$through.

In $1984$ the National Organ Transplant Act $($NOTA$)$ made it a federal crime to pay donors. Unlike plasma, sperm and egg donation$$for which compensation is legal and common$$paying marrow donors remains illegal. The result? Shortages, waiting lists and unnecessary suffering. Despite strong public support in favor of compensation for blood stem$-$cell donors who use apheresis, Department of Health and Human Services officials have done nothing to de$-$criminalize such compensation.