Friday, August 31, 2012

Altruistic

If you're a resident or resident-to-be of Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia or Wisconsin, you may be entitled to a tax break. Oooh, finally, readers! These 17 states all offer tax breaks to incentivize organ donation, specifically for a kidney, a portion of the liver or some bone marrow.

 
These tax breaks can reach up to $10,000 a household, depending on the state, but for the average donation (i.e., not the entire contents of the body), it translates to around $1,000, which often is less than the donation procedure itself. (The breaks are, incidentally, inherently capped, since an able-bodied donor has ably-limited-hardware (or software, as the connective tissue world goes).) Thus, there has been found to be no correlation between monetary incentives and organ donation; in other words, when it comes to kidneys, and livers and marrow, oh my (!), it's altruism that motivates the gesture.

Methinks these states should reconsider reallocating the potential tax-break dollars to r and d in the three-dimensional bio-printing of organs that has, as of late vis-a-vis a trachea and a liver (separate printings), been shown to be exceptionally successful.

Life sometimes can be altruistic.
 altrusitic: -adjective
Unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others.