"Our current cadaveric organ procurement policy simultaneously kills patients and increases costs," argue David L. Kaserman and A. H. Barnett in their new book The U.S. Organ Procurement System: A Prescription for Reform (AEI Press). The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 should be changed or repealed to allow markets for transplant organs to form, they write.

U.S. doctors performed approximately 22,000 organ transplants in 1999, but that number is dwarfed by the growing list of patients waiting for organs, currently 67,000. Many of those patients die before receiving a needed organ because the quantity of organs demanded exceeds the number supplied.

The low supply of organs for transplant is not attributable to an inadequate number available, note Kaserman and Barnett. Of the 2 million deaths per year in the United States, between 13,000 and 29,000 occur under circumstances that would allow the organs of the deceased to be transplanted. Fewer than 6,000, however, yielded donations in 1999.

Current policy offers little incentive to the families of the deceased to donate organs, write Kaserman and Barnett. But initial evidence they cite shows that if markets were to form allowing organ donors and their families to be compensated for their trouble, the shortage would be resolved at surprisingly low prices. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 forbids such markets.

"Given the likely number of potential cadaveric organ donors, a more effective procurement policy could, in principle, increase collection by two- or even threefold," the authors conclude.