With functioning kidneys for all | Hacker News Reader

With functioning kidneys for all

theatlantic.com

17 pointsgrosales17 comments

Tissue engineering, tissue engineering, tissue engineering.

Use stem cells, cancer cells use anything, stick it in a box, put in a filter, keep it external to the body, like one of those new insulin pumps.

Or shrink the dialysis machine down the size of one of those new insulin pumps, and have it on the person 25/7.

Right now I think there's 50/50 chance advancements like that will NOT happen in the US, but in less regulated places like China.

Sorry, the U.S. government is way too busy spending trillions on banker bailouts and restarting the market for granite countertops and subprime auto loans. Medical research is simply not a priority in the United States. Congress spent nearly 30 times more on AIG than the entire federal cancer research budget.

You've hit indirectly on why it's so important that people be able to keep their own money. The brutal reality of the world is that, outside of yourself and some close companions, no one really cares about you or your ability to survive a disease in 40 years. Certainly not politicians in Washington DC. I very much doubt political aristocrats in Beijing care either.

Unsurprisingly, resources get best allocated to what most people actually care about when people get to individually allocate their own resources.

Its hard to disagree with the premise - people don't care - but don't you think there is a bit of a tragedy of the commons situation here ... i mean its not like there are any options for the non-super wealthy to support research of grand projects (space travel, anti-death creams...)

One of these things is not like the other.

The AIG bailout was emergency spending to prevent economic collapse. It wasn't an ongoing policy initiative. You can argue over whether it's effective or efficient but it's not anything like the cancer budget. That's like saying that, because of the aid after Katrina, building housing and infrastructure on the Gulf Coast is a policy priority.

Yes, there are ways the government could have mitigated or prevented both of these disasters (funding upgrades to the New Orleans levee system, doing a better job at regulating the finance industry, not encouraging homeownership), but you can't compare priorities by comparing emergency spending to ordinary spending. Remember, Congress is incompetent, not evil. They probably didn't anticipate that trillion dollar bailouts would be part of the cost of their policies.

The neglect of what AIG was doing before the crash was an intentional policy priority. The recent bail-out cost was just the deferred cost of that policy.

AIG bet against a complete bust of the system. They were otherwise reasonably hedged. Governments have placed much larger and more harmful bets on continued economic growth in the form of spending commitments that outpace even rosy growth estimates, but I don't hear the populists crying over that.

Bailing out AIG (and their contract partners) was the problem. Creating an environment where bailout was even perceived as possible was the problem. Turning the US into a debtor nation via enormous government spending was the problem (in that it kicked off a number of other distortions).

Every year there seem to be new emergencies. So it seems fair to say that curating emergencies and applying expensive political band-aids is a higher policy priority than long-term projects that might actually improve the standard of living.

Are you trying to spin a conspiracy theory that the government intentionally created the recession? I think it's far more reasonable to assume that the government is incompetent.

There are plenty of government policies (I count agriculture, defense, and healthcare) that seem designed to funnel taxpayer money to crony corporations. But engineering the collapse of AIG, GM, and the investment banks simply to nationalize them seems outside the competence of the federal government.

Systematic incompetence creates systematic failure. There's no conflict or conspiracy here.

Yes, but we were talking about priorities, not failure. If it wasn't your intention to disagree with me I apologize for the misunderstanding.

> Yes, there are ways the government could have mitigated or prevented both of these disasters (funding upgrades to the New Orleans levee system

The upgrades were funded. The money was spent and the upgrades supposedly happened. The levees were inspected.

And the good people of New Orleans re-elected the govt that did this.

> a better job at regulating the finance industry,

Banking and insurance are the most regulated parts of the finance industry. AIG was regulated as both, in multiple countries.

> not encouraging homeownership

Talk to Barney Frank - he's back at it.

How many times does something have to fail before you give up on it?

I have a solution that costs no money that makes the organ shortage situation much better. It involves enacting one rule:

  A person may only receive an organ if that person is a registered organ donor.

And how exactly would that help? As the article points out, even if everyone were an organ donor that wouldn't significantly impact the massive waiting list. It's also the case that people who are receiving the organs probably aren't the best candidates for organ donation anyway.

Yes, it would significantly impact the waiting list, as the article points out! Making everyone a donor would mean the waiting list would start decreasing instead of increasing. To get the list down to zero within a decade (without monetary compensation) you would need that plus other techniques mentioned in the article.

This is a general idea for all organs- most other organs cannot be taken from living people and thus cannot use techniques mentioned in the article.

> without monetary compensation

Remind me - why is monetary compensation bad?

Everyone in the transplant system is paid except the person who makes it possible....

Will donating a kidney significantly shorten my lifespan?

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