New papers on economic design: listing service

Alex Teytelboym writes:

Dear Al, 

I'm now editing the weekly NEP mailing list on economic design.

You can subscribe here: http://lists.repec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nep-des

I would be very grateful for a plug on your blog, and, of course, if you'd also subscribed and submitted your papers to repec.

Cheers, 

A.T.

Science publishing and (versus?) science

The Guardian has an interesting history of modern science publishing, focusing on the growth of Elsevier.

Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell. By Stephen Buranyi

hard to excerpt, but worth reading whole...

Dr. Vanessa Grubbs on racial disparities in deceased kidney allocation

NPR has an interview with Dr Vanessa Grubbs, about her new book, on racial disparities in organ allocation, and on her experience as a living kidney donor and as a nephrologist:
'Interlaced Fingers' Traces Roots Of Racial Disparity In Kidney Transplants.

Ten years ago she published this article on the subject:
Good For Harvest, Bad For Planting

Overturning old convictions (for being gay) in Germany

Here's the story from the Guardian (in the "better late than never" category):
Germany to quash convictions of 50,000 gay men under Nazi-era law
Parliament votes through measure overturning conviction and offering compensation to the estimated 5,000 men still alive

"Germany’s parliament have voted to quash the convictions of 50,000 gay men sentenced for homosexuality under a Nazi-era law that remained in force after the second world war.

After decades of lobbying, victims and activists hailed a triumph in the struggle to clear the names of gay men who lived with a criminal record under article 175 of the penal code.

"An estimated 5,000 of those found guilty under the statute are still alive. The measure overwhelmingly passed the Bundestag lower house of parliament, where chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition enjoys a large majority.

...

"Germany’s article 175 outlawed “sexual acts contrary to nature... be it between people of the male gender or between people and animals”. Sex between women was not explicitly illegal.

"Although it dated from 1871, it was rarely enforced until the Nazis came to power, and in 1935 they toughened the law to carry a sentence of 10 years of forced labour.

"More than 42,000 men were convicted during the Third Reich and sent to prison or concentration camps.

"In 2002, the government introduced a new law that overturned their convictions, but that move didn’t include those prosecuted after the second world war.

"The article was finally dropped from the penal code in East Germany in 1968. In West Germany, it reverted to the pre-Nazi era version in 1969 and was only fully repealed in 1994.

************

See my earlier posts on Turing's Law, named for Britain's 2003 posthumous pardon of Alan Turing.

London crossing signs and diversity in marriages

Walking from HM Treasury to LSE, a quarter turn around Trafalger Square shows that British traffic wardens have a relaxed view of modern marriage--here are two walk signs (or maybe go-ahead signs) that seem to celebrate both traditional and same-sex marriage.  (I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn't have time to circumnavigate the square and look for other variations on this theme...)

Could commercial surrogacy become legal in Denmark?

It doesn't sound like change in Danish surrogacy law is imminent, but it's under discussion. The Copenhagen Post has the story:

Still prohibited, is the tide slowly turning for commercial surrogacy?

Many Danes are using the internet to find a mother abroad

"There are many countries where surrogacy is illegal, and they are not all Catholic! Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria are among the many that prohibit all forms of surrogacy.

Others, such as the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Belgium, allow a form of surrogacy in which the surrogate mother is not paid, or only reimbursed for reasonable expenses. These countries prohibit full-on commercial surrogacy.Commercial surrogacy is legal in some US states and countries such as India, Russia and Ukraine.

...

"The situation in Denmark

Det Etiske Råd, the government’s ethical council, unanimously believes that commercial surrogacy is an ethical problem and a minority are against any form of surrogacy – either with or without payment. Legally-speaking, commercial surrogacy is forbidden under paragraph 31 of the Child Act (Børnelov).

Danish doctors must not assist in inseminating a surrogate mother with eggs from another women who, according to an agreement, will become the child’s social mother. It is also illegal for a third party to broker contact between a surrogate mother and a childless couple, so in practice it is almost impossible to find and use a surrogate mother in Denmark unless a friend or family member volunteers their services.  Danish law does allow a surrogate if she uses her own eggs and is willing to give up the child for adoption without being paid for it.

If a family travels abroad to one of the countries where surrogacy is legal, they may have a problem bringing the child back to Denmark. In the spring of 2014, the appeals tribunal, Ankestyrelsen, underlined that in Denmark the women who gives birth to a baby is regarded as its mother, so it can be difficult to obtain permission to bring another person’s child into the country.

A political dilemma
Danish politicians are divided on the issue as well. Kristeligt Dagblad reported on a debate in Parliament held in December 2013 about the use of surrogate mothers in which many parties expressed scepticism about the idea.

Özlem Cekic from Socialistisk Folkeparti said “personally, I feel that if really good friends asked me if I would be a surrogate, then I’d say yes. But if we have to examine the law, it is extremely important to look at the many dilemmas connected with surrogacy.”

“When money changes hands, there are also a lot of problems that could be equated with prostitution. We have to look at this without prejudice, but also investigate all the grey areas and dilemmas.”

Birgitte Josefsen (Venstre), another member of the committee reporting to Det Etiske Råd, had this to say: “Personally, I don’t support surrogacy. I’m very afraid that situations might occur in which a family-member won’t be able to refuse another family member who wants a child.”

Danske Folkeparti was also negative. Its health spokesperson, Liselott Blixt, said “on the face of it, it seems a noble gesture that a woman would carry another woman’s child out of altruism. But ethically, we at Danske Folkeparti don’t think it is something we should allow in Denmark. We don’t know what new problems it might cause.”

A beacon of hope?
However, in June 2016, DR Nyheder reported that Liberal Alliance wants to make surrogacy legal – the first party in Denmark to do so.

Despite the law, it seems as if an increasing number of childless Danish families are finding surrogate mothers abroad through the internet, using secret Facebook groups and false profiles.

“Liberal Alliance would like to make it possible for Danish citizens to find a surrogate mother here – rather than having to travel to the US,” said May-Britt Buch-Kattrup, the party’s health spokesperson.

In the US, there are thorough background checks on prospective surrogate mothers. “The screening model used in the US sounds very sensible and could form the basis for a similar law in Denmark,” added Buch-Kattrup.

But Karen Ellemenn, who was social minister at the time, came out plainly against the idea. “Basically, I don’t think that it is a human right to have a child. I believe we ought to continue to uphold the ban.”

The Danish church, however, was more conciliatory. A spokesman for the Bishop of Copenhagen said that the Folkekirke does not have an official view on the subject. However, he added that individual priests probably have their own ideas.

Who DAREs wins?
Mikkel Raahade is chairman of DARE Danmark, a lobby organisation that advocates for the legalisation of surrogate montherhood in Denmark.
DARE does not believe that it is the state’s business to interfere in these things. It should be looked at as an extension of the existing fertility treatments and available to all.”

“On top of that, the present legislation seems to open up to all the pitfalls that the opponents of surrogacy are afraid of. For example, that the mother might have regrets and be scarred for life from the experience, or that it is a sort of human trafficking.”

He went on to say that “in addition, the current view is that it is okay if a friend or family member is involved. Our experience has shown that this might not be true. We know of at least two cases where a mother has disappeared with the baby.”

There have also been cases that when the baby is born, the parents have refused to take it, thus leaving the mother stuck with the child.

Like Liberal Alliance, DARE thinks the best solution would be one where some form of screening takes place, like in Ukraine or the US.

In DARE’s view, having a child may not be a human right, but it makes sense that it is looked at in the context of fertility treatment in general.

Despite the best efforts of Liberal Alliance and DARE, it seems as if full legality for would-be parents is still some way off."

The article ends with this summary of the current situation:

"

Surrogacy in Denmark

"In Denmark it is illegal to pay another woman to bear your child

It is also illegal to initiate any form of contact with a potential surrogate

Infringements can result in fines or imprisonment for up to four months

In Denmark, the birth-mother is automatically regarded as the mother – even though a foreign surrogate has made a declaration giving up her right – and therefore parental custody will always belong to the birth mother

The biological mother – the one who has donated the egg and who will raise the child – can obtain parental custody through adoption"

Kidney transplant in June 1950

I'm accustomed to calling Murray's 1954 surgery the first successful kidney transplant, and indeed the first successful organ transplant.
(see my post  A transplant makes history--Joseph Murray’s 1954 kidney operation ushered in a new medical era.)

But there were earlier attempts, and there's room to disagree on what constitutes a success. Here's a recent anniversary article about an earlier kidney transplant, from a deceased donor (and also before immunosuppression--Murray's surgery involved a live donation from one identical twin to another...)

This Day In Science June 17, 1950 – First successful kidney transplant operation was performed

"On June 17th 1950 Dr. Richard Lawler performed the first successful kidney transplant. The recipient was Ruth Tucker, a 44-year-old woman who had polycystic kidney disease (PKD).
...
"A transplant was risky but the only real option for survival for Tucker, as dialysis was not yet widely available. The donor kidney was removed from a patient who had died of cirrhosis of the liver.

“Not the most ideal patient, but the best we could find,” said Dr. Lawler after the surgery. The transplant surgery was quick, and 45 minutes after removal of the kidney from the donor the operation was complete. Tucker was released from the hospital a month later.
"The kidney functioned for at least 53 days, but it was removed 10 months after the surgery as it had been rejected. This transplant was conducted well before the development of immunosuppressant drugs and tissue typing which would have helped prevent organ rejection.

"Ruth Tucker had PKD in both of her kidneys, leaving one non-functioning and the other functioning at 10%. The donor kidney gave her body the chance to resume normal kidney function, therefore when the donor kidney was removed, Ruth was able to live another 5 years with her one remaining kidney. She died in 1955 from coronary artery disease which was unrelated to PKD and her organ transplant.

"Dr. Richard Lawler never performed another transplant, saying that he “just wanted to get it started”.
***********

Here's some more detail on the website of the Little Hospital of Mary in Chicago, where the surgery was performed.

First Successful Organ Transplant, Little Company of Mary, 1950

"The surgery was extremely courageous, given that it was done without anti-infection drugs, tissue typing and other advances that are now standard. A Newsweek article a week after the surgery was headlined, “Borrowed from the Dead”. The article stated, “Successful transplants have been made of bones, skin, nerves, tendons and eye corneas. But up to last week, no vital human organ had ever been moved from one person to another. Then, in a daring surgical feat, Dr. Richard M. Lawler of the Little Company of Mary Hospital, Chicago, removed a diseased kidney from Mrs. Ruth Tucker…The patient was ‘willing to gamble rather than lie back and wait for death,’ Dr. Lawler said.” A month later, Tucker was released from the hospital, a medical miracle. She lived five years before dying from a coronary occlusion following pneumonia."

Ben Edelman calls out Uber

Ben has been following Uber for some time, and he's calling them out for their law-breaking business model:

Uber Can’t Be Fixed — It’s Time for Regulators to Shut It Down

June 21, 2017 - Permalink

From many passengers' perspective, Uber is a godsend — lower fares than taxis, clean vehicles, courteous drivers, easy electronic payments. Yet the company’s mounting scandals reveal something seriously amiss, culminating in last week’s stern report from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Some people attribute the company’s missteps to the personal failings of founder-CEO Travis Kalanick. These have certainly contributed to the company’s problems, and his resignation is probably appropriate. Kalanick and other top executives signal by example what is and is not acceptable behavior, and they are clearly responsible for the company’s ethically and legally questionable decisions and practices.

But I suggest that the problem at Uber goes beyond a culture created by toxic leadership. The company’s cultural dysfunction, it seems to me, stems from the very nature of the company’s competitive advantage: Uber’s business model is predicated on lawbreaking. And having grown through intentional illegality, Uber can’t easily pivot toward following the rules.

Continued at hbr.org.

Repugnance to Science: Brecht's "Life of Galileo" at the Young Vic

I had the great pleasure of seeing a timely production of Brecht's Life of Galileo at the Young Vic.

Before his troubles with the Church, Galileo has a Silicon Valley vibe:
"When a young man in Siena, I saw how a couple of builders, after five minutes argument, replaced a thousand-year-old system for moving graniteblocks by a new and more practical arrangement of the tackle. Then andthere I knew-the old age is past and a new age is here."

Later in the play, the Cardinal Inquisitor explains to the Pope why the Church should regard science with repugnance:

" A terrible unrest has come, into the world. It is this unrest in their own minds which these men would impose on the motionless earth. They cry: the figures compel us. But whence come their figures? They come from doubt, as
everyone knows. These men doubt everything. Are we to establish human
society on doubt and no longer on faith? ‘You are my master, but I doubt if
that is a good thing.’ That is your house and your wife, but I doubt whether
they should not be mine.’ "
***********

Climate change anyone?

Travel while on dialysis

One of the burdens of kidney failure is that, while waiting for the chance of a transplant, patients often have to spend several hours several times a week on dialysis.  This means most patients can't travel without arranging dialysis sessions at their destination.

After my Morishima Lecture in London, Silvina Lindner pointed out to me that there is an emerging marketplace for dialysis travel.

Here's the website of Connectus Medical, which offers to help arrange dialysis in more than 150 countries.

(In another approach, see my post on efforts towards portable dialysis.)

Needed: International responsibility sharing for refugees

The Scalabrinians, a Catholic organization concerned with refugees, has issued a report:

International Migration Policy Report:
Responsibility Sharing for Large Movements of Refugees and  Migrants in Need of Protection
A report of the Scalabrini migration study centers June 2017

It's table of contents reminds us that the problem is not limited to any one region of the world. Here are the chapter headings...

1. Introduction
2. Rohingyas: The People for Whom No One is Responsible
3. South Sudan: A Young Country Divided by Civil War
4. Politics and Responsibility Sharing in Facing the Migration Crisis in Europe
5. The Challenges of Migration Trends and Shared Responsibility in Latin America and the Caribbean 
6. Knocking on the Door: Vulnerable Populations at the US-Mexico Border
7. Conclusion

Here is the Conclusion:

"The five papers in the 2017 International Migration Policy Report of the Scalabrini migration study centers demonstrate that the global community is at a crossroads with regard to the protection of large movements of refugees and migrants. Common to each analysis is the absence of adequate responsibility-sharing mechanisms to ensure that all nations contribute to the protection of persons on the move.

"In Europe, nations continue to point the finger and not accept responsibility collectively, with front-line nations, such as Greece and Italy, bearing the brunt of protection responsibilities. In Africa, regional cooperation, while noble, is insufficient to the need, leading to protracted refugee situations with little options for improvement.

"The Rohingya ethnic group of Myanmar is stateless, with few nations in the region willing to accept them permanently, as their villages are being burned and their population being killed by the Myanmar military. Latin America and the Caribbean are largely immigrant-producing countries, with the majority of their migrant populations attempting to reach the United States and Canada, but with many settling in nations within the region. In North America, the United States, the wealthiest nation on earth, is using deterrence tactics to prevent unaccompanied children and women and children in families from arriving at the US border.

"The policy recommendations in these papers point to the need for a uniform global model for responsibility sharing in the context of large movements of persons. Such a model would apply to the entire international community and would help relieve the burden on front-line states, many of which do not have the capacity to deal with large populations.

"As such, it is vital that the processes leading to a Global Compact on Responsibility Sharing for Refugees and the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration continue and lead to binding agreements by 2018. The Scalabrini migration study centers will continue to inform and participate in these processes and will raise concerns and solutions, based on its expertise and experience serving refugees and migrants around the world.

"As Pope Francis has stated, the world must move beyond a “globalization of indifference” to migrants to international solidarity: “It is important that nations in the forefront of meeting this present emergency not be left alone, and it is also essential to initiate a frank and respectful dialogue among all the countries involved in the problem — countries of origin, transit, or reception — so that, with greater boldness and creativity, new and sustainable solutions can be sought.”1

1  Pope Francis in an address to the Vatican diplomatic corps on January 11, 2016.799

Listen to my Morishima Lecture: Marketplaces and Market Design (audio only)

Below you can listen to a podcast of my lecture in honor of Michio Morishima at the LSE last Thursday. (Update: I've also added links to video below.)

I showed slides in my lecture, but I think you can actually follow the talk without them.  The introduction is by Professor Nava Ashraf.  My talk ends at minute 60, and then you can hear a half hour of questions and answers, many raised by my discussion of repugnant transactions.
******************

Update:
Here are two videos of the event; the first mostly follows me and not the slides, the second is audio plus slides.

***************

Mail order opiods, paid for by bitcoin, ordered over the dark net

The NY Times has the story:
Opioid Dealers Embrace the Dark Web to Send Deadly Drugs by Mail

"In a growing number of arrests and overdoses, law enforcement officials say, the drugs are being bought online. Internet sales have allowed powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl — the fastest-growing cause of overdoses nationwide — to reach living rooms in nearly every region of the country, as they arrive in small packages in the mail.

The authorities have been frustrated in their efforts to crack down on the trade because these sites generally exist on the so-called dark web, where buyers can visit anonymously using special browsers and make purchases with virtual currencies like Bitcoin.

The problem of dark web sales appeared to have been stamped out in 2013, when the authorities took down the most famous online marketplace for drugs, known as Silk Road. But since then, countless successors have popped up, making the drugs readily available to tens of thousands of customers who would not otherwise have had access to them."
**************

For an earlier post on the Silk Road marketplace and its demise, see

Monday, June 1, 2015

The dangers of designing markets for illegal goods: Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht--'Dread Pirate Roberts'-- Sentenced to Life in Prison

A long transplant chain in Nebraska

An 18 person chain (9 donors and 9 transplants) is celebrated in Nebraska:
After transplant chain, donors meet those whose lives they saved
By Julie Anderson / World-Herald staff writer  Jun 9, 2017

"On Thursday, 18 people — nine living donors and nine recipients from across Nebraska and one other state — gathered at the Nebraska Medical Center to learn how a chain begun by an Omaha mother of seven had come together and how it is making a difference in the lives of the recipients, one as young as 5.

Until then, none had known how many were involved in what now ranks as the largest single-hospital living-donor kidney transplant chain in Nebraska history and one of the largest chains at a single hospital in the United States. Previously the medical center’s largest transplant exchange was a three-way exchange in July 2016."

Breast milk sales and bans

Cambodia is banning more than surrogacy (see Wednesday's post):
Ban on breast milk sales throws spotlight on growing international trade

"Cambodian authorities have permanently banned the sale and export of human breast milk after suspending exports from a US company that has been collecting it from impoverished mothers for more than two years.

The ban has put the spotlight on a global trade in breast milk to other mothers, bodybuilders, cancer patients and breast-milk fetishists.

 ...
Cambodian women have been earning between $US7 and $US10 ($9 to $13) a day for selling their milk to the company.

Ambrosia Labs issued a statement saying "we believe in empowering the mothers of Cambodia with a way to make money while nurturing their families, as well as others, through the donation of their excess milk".

"We work hard to set and monitor guidelines to ensure that we are not taking milk out of infants' mouths," the company said, adding it does not accept milk from mothers of infants younger than six months.

But Ing Kantha Phavi, Cambodia's Minister of Women's Affairs, said the sale of breast milk could stunt children's growth and development and thwart the government's efforts to promote breastfeeding among new mothers.

The ban has been welcomed by the United Nations' children's agency, UNICEF, in a country where breastfeeding has been in decline.

"Breast milk could be considered as human tissue, the same as blood, and as such, its commercialisation in Cambodia should not be supported," the agency said.

"Cambodian welfare groups also welcomed the ban.

"Even if women agree to do it voluntarily, they often have no other choices and face economic pressure," said Ros Sopheap, the director of the women's rights group Gender and Development for Cambodia."
***********

In related news, here's a story from the South China Morning Post, about what appears to be a small but growing domestic market:
Chinese mums cash in on latest and lucrative craze: selling surplus breast milk
Although the trade is not large, the commodity can sell online for as much as US$22 per 250ml

Morishima Lecture at the LSE: Marketplaces and Market Design--live webcast, June 15

I'll speak on Marketplaces and Market Design

Marketplaces and Market Design

Thursday 15 June 2017 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Hosted by STICERD

OLD THEATRE, OLD BUILDING

Speaker

Professor Alvin Roth

Chair

Professor Nava Ashraf

Nobel laureate Alvin Roth will deliver this year’s Morishima Lecture on the topics of game theory, market design and experimental economics.

Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan Shaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He was awarded the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley, for their work on the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design. 

Nava Ashraf is Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also Director of Research of the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship.

STICERD (@STICERD_LSE) brings together world-class academics to put economics and related disciplines at the forefront of research and policy. Founded in 1978 by the renowned Japanese economist Michio Morishima, with donations from Suntory and Toyota, we are a thriving research community within the LSE.  

Surrogacy in Southeast Asia gets complicated

This Week in Asia has the story:
HOW ASIA’S SURROGATE MOTHERS BECAME A CROSS-BORDER BUSINESS
Clampdowns on surrogacy in Cambodia, Thailand and India have led to the emergence of complex, cross-border operations that put women, children and would-be parents at greater risk than before
BY AUDREY WILSON

"Since surrogacy brokers began recruiting women from a sleepy community in Cambodia’s Takeo province last year, they seem to have knocked on every door except for that of village chief Ouk Savouen. By his estimates, at least a dozen women in the village, an hour’s drive from Phnom Penh, have delivered babies for foreign couples.

"When Savouen reported the matter to police in 2016 there was little they could do as at that time the industry was operating in a legal grey area. A lack of government regulation against the practice had made Cambodia popular with foreign couples (“intended parents”) seeking surrogate mothers – and this popularity had only grown following decisions to ban the practice in India, Nepal and neighbouring Thailand.

"So the recruiters kept coming. In Savouen’s village – where many families owe informal debts and gambling is popular, even among women – offers from brokers seeking surrogates were particularly tempting. A standard payment for a pregnancy would be in the region of US$10,000, more than five times the annual wage for a garment worker and enough to build a new home or pay off a loan.

"In October, there was what Savouen viewed as a breakthrough: the health ministry followed other countries in the region by deciding to ban foreigners from seeking commercial surrogacy within its borders.

"That decision may have been welcomed by people like Savouen, but it’s had a host of unintended, and unpleasant consequences, not least among them the chaos it has caused for surrogates and intended parents whose embryos were implanted before the decision was made. The ensuing chaos forced Phnom Penh in recent weeks to announce an “exit strategy” for such children, though dozens of intended parents are still reporting problems in taking custody of their newborns.

"More worryingly, say campaigners, is that the decision, alongside other countries’ clampdowns on surrogacy, has led to the emergence of a new, unregulated cross-border industry that exists outside any national jurisdiction and puts women, children and parents at greater risk than before.

"It is now not uncommon for a couple in one country to pay a surrogate in a second, via an agency in a third, for a child that will be born in a fourth, all in an effort to comply with the letter of the law in the various jurisdictions. And while such arrangements help agencies skirt the legal issues, critics say they make it easier for one side or another to cheat on payment issues and, in the worst case scenarios, give rise to fears over human-trafficking.
...
"Since the ban in Cambodia, intended parents are increasingly being directed to Laos. “Laos is now in the position Cambodia was in early 2016,” said US organisation Sensible Surrogacy. “There is no law, so surrogacy is permitted only because the government has not stepped in to regulate the practice yet.”

"Several companies mention operations in Laos on their websites, including Thailand-based New Genetics Global, which left Cambodia immediately after the ban, and Laos Fertility, which is based in the US. Talent IVF Asia is operating in Vientiane with Laotian surrogates, according to Families through Surrogacy.

"A representative for Laos Fertility said its clinic had opened in Vientiane after the clampdown in Thailand and provided a price list, with hospital service fees listed in Thai baht. Its website states that surrogate mothers remain with their families during the pregnancy.

"Embryos are implanted in surrogate mothers in Vientiane while the women often receive prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care in another country, such as Thailand.
...
"The shift towards cross-border trade has presented other issues. In April, a Thai man was arrested at the Laos border carrying semen in a nitrogen tank bound for a clinic in Vientiane. New Genetics Global recommends that intended parents travel to Laos to donate sperm, Lam said.
...
"Experts warn women, children and parents remain at risk. “Wherever surrogacy is unregulated, there are reports that surrogates are vulnerable and don’t always get the money promised,” said Patricia Fronek, a professor at Griffith University in Australia who specialises in surrogacy and adoption. She added that intended parents were often asked for more money than originally agreed. Fronek also said there was “a legal question about trafficking when women are transported across borders”.

Yesterday was Loving Day: 50 years of legal inter-racial marriage throughout the United States

Yesterday was Loving Day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision on June 12, 1967 in the case of Loving v. Virginia, that bans on interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

I don't think anyone can help being reminded of the Supreme Court decision on June 26, 2015, that decided that bans on same sex marriage were unconstitutional (in the less fortuitously named case of OBERGEFELL ET AL. v. HODGES, DIRECTOR, OHIO DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL.).

Here's the NY Times, on a couple married in 1950 in California: ‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.

"When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.

On Monday, they will mark the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case that overturned antimiscegenation laws nationwide. Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, had been sentenced to a year in a Virginia prison for marrying each other. The case would serve as a basis for the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage."

Organ preservation could bring big changes to transplantation

Transplantation would be a lot less hectic if organs could be preserved. Here's a 42-author paper (the biggest coauthorship I've been involved in) that discusses some of the possibilities.

The promise of organ and tissue preservation to transform medicine 
 Sebastian Giwa, Jedediah K Lewis, Luis Alvarez, Robert Langer, Alvin E Roth, George M Church, James F Markmann, David H Sachs, Anil Chandraker, Jason A Wertheim, Martine Rothblatt, Edward S Boyden, Elling Eidbo, W P Andrew Lee, Bohdan Pomahac, Gerald Brandacher, David M Weinstock, Gloria Elliott, David Nelson, Jason P Acker, Korkut Uygun, Boris Schmalz, Brad P Weegman, Alessandro Tocchio, Greg M Fahy, Kenneth B Storey, Boris Rubinsky, John Bischof, Janet A W Elliott, Teresa K Woodruff, G John Morris, Utkan Demirci, Kelvin G M Brockbank, Erik J Woods, Robert N Ben, John G Baust, Dayong Gao, Barry Fuller, Yoed Rabin, David C Kravitz, Michael J Taylor & Mehmet Toner

Nature Biotechnology 35, 530–542 (2017) doi:10.1038/nbt.3889
Published online 07 June 2017

Abstract: The ability to replace organs and tissues on demand could save or improve millions of lives each year globally and create public health benefits on par with curing cancer. Unmet needs for organ and tissue preservation place enormous logistical limitations on transplantation, regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and a variety of rapidly advancing areas spanning biomedicine. A growing coalition of researchers, clinicians, advocacy organizations, academic institutions, and other stakeholders has assembled to address the unmet need for preservation advances, outlining remaining challenges and identifying areas of underinvestment and untapped opportunities. Meanwhile, recent discoveries provide proofs of principle for breakthroughs in a family of research areas surrounding biopreservation. These developments indicate that a new paradigm, integrating multiple existing preservation approaches and new technologies that have flourished in the past 10 years, could transform preservation research. Capitalizing on these opportunities will require engagement across many research areas and stakeholder groups. A coordinated effort is needed to expedite preservation advances that can transform several areas of medicine and medical science.

View full text

Portable hemodialysis?

When I was in Trento I was approached by a team from an Italian-Californian startup that is trying to develop a portable hemodialysis system that could fit in the overhead compartment on a plane, or could allow a van to become a mobile dialysis provider.  Here's their webpage: EasyDial, and good luck to them.