I know this is a tricky area, fraught with peril unless policymakers craft careful policies to police abuse, but I think people should be free to work out financial arrangements among willing parties that help increase the frequency of life-saving donations of human tissues.

The Institute of Justice agrees and has just filed suit on behalf of several plantiffs to strike down a federal law making it a felony to offer compensation to individuals willing to donate their bone marrow. I think the libertarian public-interest firm has chosen its case wisely. From its press release:

The National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984 treats compensating marrow donors as though it were black-market organ sales. Under NOTA, giving a college student a scholarship or a new homeowner a mortgage payment for donating marrow could land everyone—doctors, nurses, donors and patients—in federal prison for up to five years.
NOTA’s criminal ban violates equal protection because it arbitrarily treats renewable bone marrow like nonrenewable solid organs instead of like other renewable or inexhaustible cells—such as blood—for which compensated donation is legal. That makes no sense because bone marrow, unlike organs such as kidneys, replenishes itself in just a few weeks after it is donated, leaving the donor whole once again. The ban also violates substantive due process because it irrationally interferes with the right to participate in safe, accepted, lifesaving, and otherwise legal medical treatment.

More information here. I wish them Godspeed.