A kidney donor at 18 now regrets it
This is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way as unethical, but the best way to incentivize organ donation is if the donors get paid a market price for the organ.  The donor is giving up a valuable piece of their body, taking time and large medical risks in surgery, and likely reduced life expectancy.<p>If you walk through the current process, everyone in the donation gets paid -- doctors, nurses, hospital, pharma -- except the donor.<p>There are a number of advantages of donors getting paid:<p>1. The supply market would increase dramatically.  Thus many more people receiving organs who would have otherwise died waiting.<p>2. Heirs to people who have died young, with healthy organs could get paid for donating their organs.<p>3. Black markets would be dramatically reduced, since people in desperate need of an organ could pay in the open, rather than secretly paying a donor.<p>4. People without money can legally open a Kickstarter to raise funds for an organ donation.<p>Note Iran has partially done this, and the results have been very positive [1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1819484/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1819484/</a>