We already have intrusive government that blocks life-saving, harmless transactions

...since 1984, it has been illegal to pay someone to surrender a body part, even posthumously. Campaigns to browbeat Americans into signing organ donor cards, however, haven't sufficed. The transplant organ shortage has grown.

Since 1989, kidney donations have doubled. But the number of patients in need of them is five times higher than it was then. Last year, 4,456 people died while waiting for a kidney transplant. The story with livers follows the same line.

Among the losers from this guaranteed-shortage policy are victims of cancer and other lethal diseases who need bone marrow transplants. Some of them have filed a lawsuit, which goes to court in Los Angeles this week, asking to be allowed to offer compensation to donors—which is now a felony punishable by five years in prison.

One of the people involved in the lawsuit is Doreen Flynn of Lewiston, Maine, a single mother with five kids—including three afflicted with a rare, fatal blood disease that can be cured only with a bone marrow transplant.

The ban is particularly indefensible in this realm. Someone giving up a kidney loses an important organ for good. But bone marrow donors produce new marrow to replace what is lost. Given that it's legal under federal law to buy and sell blood and sperm, why is bone marrow treated differently?

Monetary incentives would offset the downside of letting strangers perforate your flesh with sharp instruments. Someone who provides marrow has to go through a longer and less enjoyable process than supplying blood or sperm.