I Personally Prefer Ghostbusters
Movie buff Steve Kurtz dares to name 100 comedies better than Groundhog Day
Dynamist Blog
Why People Go to Chain Stores
My Favorite (Guest) Blogger
Professor Postrel is guest blogging at Organizations and Markets. His first post, on "physics envy," is here.
Defamatory Abbreviations
Eugene Volokh emails, "So what do you think is at http://docnet.dc.state.ks.us/POSTREL.htm? Not anything about our family, that's for sure.
The Lost World of Airline Glamour
My new Atlantic column looks at what happened to airline glamour and why luxury and service can't bring it back. (Link is good for three days.) For more on the glamour of aviation, see this 2004 article on the aviator as an archetype of masculine glamour.
UPDATE: I've mentioned it before, but I want to again recommend Naked Airport
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When the Internet Was New
The WSJ's Jason Fry looks back at Internet World predictions for 1995. (Tthe Internet wasn't actually new in 1995, but the Web was.) For another trip back in time, check out my early Forbes ASAP columns.
Kidney Blogging, Special Heart-Warming Sports and Style New Year's Edition
Reader Tom Royce sends this link to what he rightly calls "a great kidney story" from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The AJC's John Mannaso recounts how Thrashers fan Brandi Shaw was inspired to donate a kidney to another fan she knew only from his postings on a message board devoted to the team. Andy Freeman had added "Does anybody have an extra kidney they can give me?" to his sig line. The surgery was done in August. There's more on the Atlanta Thrashers site here. I doubt that Dr. Douglas Hanto would approve, but, fortunately, he didn't have to.
Meanwhile, Sydney hairdresser Jennie Maley is preparing to donate a kidney to her client Bernadette Keegan, who has been on dialysis since 2003. "I was blow-waving Bernie's hair one Saturday and I asked her what she was up to that night and she said she had a 'hot date' --at the renal unit. I thought of her sitting there, all on her own," Maley told a local reporter, recalling how she decided to volunteer. The surgery is scheduled for January 31. According to the Daily Telegraph story, here are 1,500 Australians waiting for kidneys, with an average wait of four years.
How to Critique Federalism Without Hysterics
Prompted by the Althouse flap, Jacob Levy addresses genuinely difficult issues of decentralization, centralization, and protection of the rights of minorities. (Via Dan Drezner.)
Kidney Blogging, Cont'd
The LAT's Alan Zarembo tells the story of Karol Franks's determined search for a kidney donor for her daughter Jenna. (The photo shows Karol in the foreground, waiting while Jenna undergoes dialysis.) I've had some email correspondence with Karol, but I had no idea of all the ups and downs she's experienced. It's a well-written feature, worth reading in its entirety, not only for what it says about the organ crisis but also for its ultimately optimistic portrayal of what a determined mother can accomplish through the power of the Internet.
Kidney Blogging, Cont'd
Reader Shari Hillman sends this link to a story about one of her neighbors who donated a kidney to a friend. Shari writes:
The recipient wanted to keep the whole thing private, but neighbors who learned of it thought it was wonderful and spread the news through the local email grapevine, which I suppose led to this publicity (although the recipient remains unnamed in the article).
I support your efforts to increase understanding about organ transplants and to urge reforming the system so that more people can be helped. I'm sure that privacy issues will be part of the debate.
More often, the donor is the one who wants to keep the matter private, because people make so much fuss, pro and con, about donations. That was the case with the widely reported instance of former Cowboy cornerback Everson Walls, who has volunteered a kidney to his friend and former teammate Ron Springs. The most shocking thing to me about the Walls case was that, according to the A.P. report, he had to endure a "500-question psychiatric evaluation." That's ridiculously invasive and time-consuming, and a classic example of how too many transplant centers treat living donors. An interview with a social worker is reasonable. A lengthy and deliberately daunting exam is simply calculated to discourage donors--which is, in fact, the point of the process in way too many places. Donors deserve respect, not infantilization. Although it was accidentally disclosed, I applaud Walls and Springs for telling their story. People need to know that the need is there and that donation is not an inconceivable act.
While the huge waiting list for a cadaver organ is horrible enough, some kidney patients don't even have that option. Here's the story of Jennifer Kates, a 29-year-old Boston-area woman who has been on dialysis for seven years and will die without a living donor. Her family members aren't compatible, and her brother has mounted a desperate publicity campaign, especially targeting the local Jewish community, to find a donor with type A or O blood. A Boston-area journalist told me about the case. For more information, see this website.
Jennifer Kates is a perfect example of why an above-board, domestic market for organs, within the legal and medical protections of our very sophisticated transplant system, would be far superior to the current "altruism-only" model. Kates cannot be helped by a deceased donor. She has a tiny family. Yet while affluent professionals can hire egg donors and surrogate mothers to undergo risky medical procedures for pay, neither her family nor an insurance company nor the hospital nor the government can legally compensate the living donor she needs to survive. It's a travesty perpetuated in the name of "justice" and "dignity."
Things could, however, be much worse than they are in the U.S. In Japan, it would have been illegal for me to give my kidney to Sally Satel, because we are not related. So Japanese kidney patients get people to pretend to be relatives, which is illegal, and money sometimes changes hands, which is also illegal. Sean Kinsell explains here. In a high-profile recent case, a couple was just convicted for paying an acquaintance to give the man a kidney, pretending to be the woman's sister. They received one-year prison terms, suspended for three years. "The couple's actions violated the spirit of the Organ Transplants Law, which represents humanity, volunteerism and fairness, and seriously eroded public trust in medical transplant procedures," said the judge. Ah, the humanity.
On a more positive note, next week the Discovery Channel will air a program on a six-person "paired donation" that enabled three people to receive compatible kidneys. Paired donation allows someone whose kidney is incompatible with a loved one in need to give that kidney to another patient who has a loved one with a kidney that's compatible for the first patient. It's a complicated barter system, but right now paired donation--which may or may not be legal under federal law--is the best hope for people with willing but incompatible living donors.
UPDATE: Happy New Year, InstaPundit readers. There is yet more Kidney Blogging on the main page.