I don’t know why I thought otherwise but I’m surprised that most of the bars in the country are in the upper Midwest. Everyone has to eat. But the fact that there are only more bars than grocery stores only in the northern Midwest is a little surprising. Why are Wisconsin and my homestate of Illinois different than the rest of the country? I’m really asking here. I’ve got no idea at all.

—Daniel Strauss

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) must close at the end of 2011 for up to a year to address design issues, according to an LHC director.

Dr Steve Myers told BBC News the faults will delay the machine reaching its full potential for two years.”

Basically, the LHC is still probably an egregiously bad investment.  Dr. Myers does caution that the LHC is “its own prototype,” and while its shutdowns get huge press coverage, “you don’t hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well.”  Fair enough.  But these shutdowns are still hugely expensive, and they push any benefits the LHC may yield to humankind back into an increasingly distant future.  The scientists at CERN have yet to convince me that the LHC is a good idea.

—Aaron Bekemeyer

And as far as I can see, things were pretty awful. Without the power to tax, we couldn’t raise an army or give veterans their pensions. Since we didn’t have a proper navy, Barbary pirates would enslave our sailors. The money of an insolvent federal government became worthless. Since we hadn’t assembled into any sort of functional economic bloc, Europeans would abuse us in trade wars.

[...]

More attention to this time period would make the valuable point that having a strong central government is a very helpful thing in the modern world. Without taking lots of power away from states and establishing a working federal government, we’d be in chaos with a failed currency, no army, a terrible economy, and enslaved sailors. The way we got out of those problems deserves to be a bigger part of our national myth than it is.

—Jasper Hart

“More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history.  Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.”

So the study isn’t saying that there’s something special about liberalism and atheism that links them to smartness; rather, smart people go in for those beliefs because they are at the vanguard of intellectual thought.  They are social and political novelties.

I’m sure you can imagine the reactions on both sides to news like this.  Liberals are saying “Well, duh!” while conservatives are raising an outcry that this is yet another piece of liberal propaganda.  That’s all rather predictable, but which side is right?

I, for one, will lean with the conservatives on this one.  Not that I think the study is propaganda.  But I think there are a couple big problems with a study like this.  For one thing, intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, so this study’s understanding of intelligence will necessarily be highly specific and subjective.

Worse, though, is the conclusion that conservatives are intellectually and biologically inferior.  Quite frankly, this is a dangerous assertion.  When you take this kind of thinking to the extreme, you end up with things like the Holocaust and “scientific” justifications of racial inferiority.  I’m not saying that this study is Nazi-esque, but it doesn’t essentially differ from other kinds of biologically deterministic thinking.  Asserting the biological inferiority of any social group starts us down a dangerous path.  Let’s not put too much credence in this study and move on.

—Aaron Bekemeyer

Cash-For-Kidneys?
NO Sale!

by:  Robert L. Houbeck

You trudge along the Huron, absorbed in wonder at what the miracle of compound interest is doing to your college debt.  Suddenly, a splash, a cry.  A man flails in the water.  He can’t swim; you can. “Please, help me!”  You (1), plunge in and do your best to rescue him, or (2), cup your hands and inquire:  “What’s it worth to you?”

Michigan men and women would choose Option One.  But why is it the right choice?  No need to invoke scripture or catechism where Kant can explain: “[T]o help others where one can is a duty.”¹ In a rescue situation, if we have the special competence and unique opportunity, we have the moral obligation to aid a neighbor in need.

The present kidney shortage is a situation in need of rescuers: more than 5,000 of our neighbors will die this year awaiting a transplant.  However, proposals to legalize compensation for kidney donors are the moral equivalent of Option Two: “What’s it worth to you?”

What’s-it-worth is official policy in Iran.² In an attempt to eliminate their shortage of kidneys for transplant, the government guarantees kidney-sellers a base fee of $1,200.  Patients then meet privately with seller-candidates to negotiate an add-on price, usually many times more.  If the parties cannot agree on “what it’s worth”, the seller walks.  If the patient has enough cash, they make a deal.

Iranian sellers are not blameworthy.  They are desperate people being treated like means.  Eighty-four percent are poor.  The state doesn’t monitor their post-sale health.  Reflecting on their ordeal, 76 percent think kidney sales should be banned!³ The true culprit is a regime that has legitimated trade in body parts.

Iran is the poster child for those who advocate compensating kidney donors.  Yet Cash-for-Kidneys hasn’t achieved its putative goal of eliminating the shortage of transplant organs.⁴ Officials admit they don’t know the full extent of national need, and many Iranians with renal disease go undiagnosed.  Hundreds who do need a transplant but can’t pay the added fee languish on the wait list for cadaver organs.

Doubtless a US kidney-sale system would be more sensitive than Iran’s.  Seller and patient would be kept apart.  Third parties – certainly government, maybe insurers – would pick up the entire tab.  Yet the program we would establish in law would be the equivalent of the Iranian Cash-for-Kidneys program.

Well, why not?  Paying for kidneys may be distasteful, but why is it wrong?

The first principle of practical reason directs us not just to pursue the good but to avoid evil.⁷ Commodifying kidneys is an evil because it reduces the human person to a means.⁸ It depersonalizes us, literally renders us an object with a market price.

Pricing kidneys reduces constitutive parts of the human person to the status of pork bellies.⁹ Moral laws apply universally.  We can’t bracket ourselves.  If it’s wrong to treat a human being as an object, and you’re a human being, it’s wrong to treat yourself as an object.  It’s wrong also for others to collude in the extracting and selling – surgeons, technicians, bureaucrats, lawmakers, taxpayers.

The Iranian state has chosen a path that we must reject.⁵ The logic of supply and demand is relentless.  Just think “outsourcing.”  Reduce the kidneys of US citizens to a commodity and soon enough we will be importing cheaper organs sold in desperation by the world’s poor.  We’d probably draw the line at kidneys from executed Chinese prisoners.⁶ But if a healthy human kidney is just another spare part bought at a market price, why squirm?

Your body is not a building inhabited by the real, unseen “you”.  Properly understood, you are your body.  A human being is a substantial unity of a material and a spiritual principle intrinsically self-integrating and self-directing.¹⁰ Some human beings once had a market price slapped onto their chests, but we fought a civil war to put an end to that injustice.  Owning a whole human being is wrong.  Paying for parts of human beings is similarly wrong.  Our living bodies, along with the fundamental goods that we pursue and which fulfill us by actualizing our basic potentialities – life, health, friendship, marriage, knowledge of truth, self-integration, worship – do not have a market exchange value.  They are incommensurable goods beyond supply and demand.¹¹

But, to rescue a neighbor, we may give as a gift that which we may not sell.  Donation of a kidney, whether in life or at death, is a gesture of the deepest friendship.  The grammar of the deed affirms: “You are not alone, I stand with you.”  We gift something of our very self.  Ideally, the gesture evokes a response equally generous.  This is how, concretely, we build a culture of solidarity.¹² If these gestures by living donors are few, no wonder:  they are acts of heroism.  Yet even the least heroic of us can do something bold: sign the “anatomical gift” commitment on the reverse of our Michigan drivers’ license.

The market economy is a valuable human invention.  It enables us to allocate scarce resources efficiently, but we choose the ends to pursue.  We are not obliged to subject human kidneys to market mechanisms.  In fact, we are obliged to resist that temptation.

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Legalize Compensation for Kidney Donors? YES!

by: Mark J. Perry

The most straightforward approach is to simply legalize cash payments for living kidney donors within a regulated market with government controls.  Surprisingly maybe, Iran first legalized financial compensation for kidney donors in the late 1980s and its organ shortage was eliminated within a decade.  The Iranian system of financial compensation involves a combination of government-funded cash payments and free health insurance for donors, supplemented by cash payments from the recipient.  For kidney recipients who are too poor to afford the normal payment, private charities provide funding.

A good place to start a discussion about whether it should be legal for kidney donors to receive financial compensation is a review of some statistical data.

Consider that:

1. Almost 51,000 patients have died on the kidney waiting list since data started being collected in 1987 – almost as many Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

2. The kidney waiting list has increased almost 6 times since 1988 while the number of annual kidney transplants has not even doubled (see chart).

3. For those patients suffering from renal failure and in desperate need of a kidney transplant, 2009 was not a good year to join the growing national waiting list.  The list for kidneys last year swelled to a new record of 83,146 waiting patients.  This wouldn’t be so bad if the number of kidney transplant operations was increasing, but it’s not.  There will likely be about 17,000 transplant operations in 2009, which is just barely higher than the previous year, and below the record-high 17,095 operations in 2006 (see chart).

Given these two trends (an increasing waiting list for kidneys, with no significant increase in transplant operations), those who joined the waiting list in 2009 will be facing the worst chances ever – only about 1 in six patients will actually receive a kidney this year, and thousands will die waiting.

The data paint a pretty grim picture of the current situation, and it worsens every year.  Simply put, the current system of organ procurement is not working and we need a new approach.

What is the current approach that leads to so much unnecessary and preventable suffering and death? Federal law (National Organ Transplant Act of 1984) makes it illegal to accept any form of financial compensation for providing a kidney to another human being, though such a transaction may save those in need from years of debilitating dialysis and a premature death sentence.

In other words, the price of a life-saving kidney is artificially set by the government at price of zero, and current law relies exclusively on altruism as the only legal means of providing a life-saving kidney.  Economics tells us that an artificially low price, regardless of the commodity, guarantees a certain outcome: a shortage.

When it comes to kidneys, the result of an artificially low price of $0.00 results in exactly what economic science predicts: a huge and growing kidney shortage that gets worse every year.  Current law ensures that needless suffering, life-draining dialysis, and premature death for kidney patients continue to increase year after year.  However, if we are willing to consider the alternative – financial compensation – we could easily solve the kidney shortage. 

What would a system that allows financial compensation for kidney donors look like? 

What has been advocated for the U.S. is a modified financial compensation program for living kidney donors, which would not involve direct cash payments like the Iranian model.  Instead, it’s been proposed that there be some type of “in-kind” financial compensation for living kidney donors that might include a contribution to an IRA retirement plan, tuition vouchers for the donor or his or her children, a tax credit, early access to Medicare, or subsidized health insurance for the donor.

Even under a modified program of financial incentives, we could realistically expect to see the number of living kidney donors increase enough to eliminate organ shortage and end the preventable suffering and premature deaths.  It’s not that the current emphasis on altruism isn’t a legitimate, partial solution to the growing kidney shortage, but, more importantly, altruism alone will never be a complete solution to the problem.  That’s why we need to legalize financial compensation for donors.

Interestingly, recent polls show that a majority of Americans agree that we should move towards a system that makes it legal to provide financial incentives for living kidney donors; the general public now understands that donor compensation is the one way to solve the growing organ shortage.

The grim reality is that a suffering patient with renal failure dies every two hours – more than 12 every day – waiting for a kidney under the current policy.  A system of altruism has not worked in the United States, it hasn’t worked anywhere else, and it will never work as the sole legitimate motive for donating kidneys.  The only way to effectively address the growing kidney shortage in the United States is to make it legal to receive financial incentives as a living kidney donor.  The market-based approach has worked in Iran and it will work here.

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edited by: David M. Friedman

–The Editors

I’m with Alyssa Rosenberg on this. I think the Admiral Ackbar choice is an excellent one. Beyond the fact that he’s an awesome Star Wars character, as Alyssa points out, it doesn’t take away from the respect for rebellion that some historical symbols hold but does not glorify an icon related to slavery or racial inequality.

I might also add that it gives Ole Miss a more complex personality than that of a big homogenous sports school. Because come on, how many party schools cheer on the big walking Star Wars character when it comes on the field?

–Daniel Strauss

This article in the New York Times posits that we are all soft, soft putty; even the slightest touch dents us. Literally. Amidst a lot of neat research was this cool bit about basketball teams in the NBA:

“In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats.”

The article went on to give Kevin Garnett of the Celtics the Most Touchy Player award, who “within 600 milliseconds of shooting a free throw…has reached out and touched four guys.”

The most touchy arenas in our lives have got to be the sports ones, which got me thinking that the Olympics, if I ever get around to watching them, would be a phenomenal experiment.  Some cultures are inherently more physically affectionate than others.  If touching can make a difference even at the level of professional basketball, why wouldn’t it make a difference in the cohesion of an Olympic team.

–Trisha Jain

On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake struck the nation of Haiti…The United States Government has deployed over 13,000 troops, treated over 7,000 patients, and evacuated over 10,500 people as of January 21st.

The White House-Office of the Press Secretary-January 21, 2010

Student Development Work Hurts Those in Need

by:  Brad Detjen

Every Spring Break, while some let loose in South Beach and others catch up on schoolwork in the library, a small but growing number of students choose to do international volunteer work. The programs they take part in vary from mission trips teaching English at orphanages in the Dominican Republic to Engineers Without Borders, through which students install sanitation systems in rural villages in Thailand. Having taken part in and organized these trips myself, I can say without hesitation that they are powerful, often life-changing experiences for student participants. However, these projects fail to help the communities that they target and often do harm.

I have recently heard that a few organizations at U of M are planning to bring students to Haiti to do volunteer work, either in relief or development. Relief projects would place students temporarily with a relief agency (such as the Red Cross) to address the immediate needs of earthquake victims. In development work, students would design a long-term project that attempts to install sustainable infrastructures for Haiti’s future. In the near future, I believe that any student project in Haiti is massively irresponsible. Long-term, I fear that any volunteer program based at U of M will attempt to graft a flawed model – a model of change brought about by temporary volunteer work – onto a failed state, and it may end disastrously.

First, let’s try to imagine a group of Michigan students traveling to Haiti in the next month. If they are able to get past the border, they will be entering an apocalyptic world. Massive shortages of food, water, and shelter persist everywhere. The sanitation system is in ruins, and cholera and dysentery are spreading wildly. The collapse of the state government has led to looting and mayhem. As the U.S. military attempts to gain control over the country, travel slows to a crawl. Whatever plans the students have to help people will have to be adaptable; donated items may attract the attention of those fighting for survival.  Any relief agency that chooses to host these students will be taking on massive liability due to the dangers listed above. Simply feeding and housing volunteers will tear invaluable resources away from dying Haitians.

In the past, most projects like these have failed to do much concrete good and have often caused harm. Why do volunteer projects miss the mark when their intentions are so pure? There are many reasons.

First, students lack the language skills and cultural sensitivity needed to carry themselves appropriately and to gain the trust of the communities where they work. From a logistical point of view, the only people who have any business entering the country now are doctors who are fluent in French and/or Haitian Creole and who have experience in disaster relief.  Beyond language are local customs and attitudes that will make or break any attempted project. Young students tend to believe in simple fixes and do not appreciate the knowledge and skills that are at hand in to project communities. This makes American students seem arrogant and becomes a cultural barrier. Often, a lot of promises are made and forgotten, giving developing communities a false hope that someone else will solve their problems for them.

Additionally, most programs – even those that claim to promote “sustainability” – do unsustainable work. They focus on short-term returns and do not establish a lasting presence that will see the project through to completion. At U of M, students cannot be involved with a project for more than 4 years, but many development projects like these have 10-year planning cycles – meaning that a project will have complete turnover at least twice between its inception and its conclusion. In Haiti, even the most sustainably-planned project may not be prepared for the instability that is characteristic to the area, from political coups to natural disasters and migratory populations.

In Haiti, in particular, a sustainable development project will be nearly impossible to coordinate. Political instability and lack of infrastructure present enormous obstacles.  This is not to say that no U of M project could ever be successful in Haiti, but it would require a continuous, year-round presence and coordination with a well-established Haitian organization. Students will need preparation in Haitian Creole, cultural training, and study in sustainable development principles.

In general, the problems of developing world poverty are far more complex, deeply-rooted, and difficult to reverse than most young people assume. In their arrogance, students can cause more problems than they set out to solve, and I am deeply concerned that any U of M-led project in Haiti will be unproductive, inappropriate, and unsafe.

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Thoughtful Service for the Common Good

by: Rebecca R. Cheezum

In the wake of the recent earthquake in Haiti, many students, seeing the images of the devastation and suffering, have looked for opportunities to provide assistance to the residents of Haiti.  Several student groups have been successful in raising funds for organizations that are providing immediate relief such as The American Red Cross and Partners in Health.  Other students have wanted to do more, and several began to speak of going to Haiti to help.  In response, a new initiative, Tèt Ansanm Ak Ayiti (TAAA), which means “United with Haiti,” aims to channel students’ altruistic energy by taking the time to build an institutionalized, long-term partnership with organizations or communities in Haiti in order to provide sustainable relief through capacity-building and long-term collaboration.  TAAA will incorporate a service learning strategy as a mechanism for responding to this crisis in a manner that will benefit Haiti while also working towards the University of Michigan’s purpose of providing education and training to its students.

Service learning is a pedagogical method for integrating community service, classroom learning, and personal reflection.  This method helps students learn class material and develop skills while also providing them valuable work experience and the opportunity to partner with diverse groups of people.  More than simply padding a résumé, service learning projects serve as a structured way for students to face the challenges of applying theoretical concepts to real world situations.

Communities can also benefit from service learning projects.

Students can help community-based organizations by contributing labor necessary to provide services that the organization may not otherwise have the staffing to do.

Students often have access to resources that community-based organizations may not, such as peer-reviewed literature, technology, faculty advisors with related expertise, and knowledge about cutting edge developments in the field.  By connecting communities with these resources, the quality of services delivered can increase.

However, not all student endeavors in communities have positive outcomes.  Poorly planned service learning projects run the risk of exploiting communities, expending energy on useless work, or sending ill-prepared students into communities where they may act offensively or paternalistically.

In order to increase the likelihood that the project is beneficial – and not detrimental – to communities, there are several key components to a service learning project that are necessary.  First, the service learning project should be developed through a collaborative partnership with the community.  Second, the purpose, goals, and expectations of the project should be clearly defined and agreed upon by students, faculty, and community partners.  Finally, there should be systems to provide feedback where students present results or reports to the community, and the community is given the opportunity to comment on the quality of the student’s work and interactions.

In an effort to use a service learning approach that will benefit both University of Michigan students and, most importantly, the residents of Haiti, TAAA will use a strategic service learning approach.  Recognizing the complexity of the needs of Haiti during a redevelopment process, the effort will be multi-disciplinary, engaging students and faculty from across campus.  The initiative will use two separate, but connected participatory processes in order to identify the interests and expertise of students and also to prioritize projects based on the most pressing needs in Haiti, as identified by Haitian community members.  TAAA will take its time in planning a response and building relationships, in order to prevent a premature, poorly planned response.

Currently, there is not enough water, food, or shelter for those who live in Haiti, let alone to support visiting students.   The roads and infrastructure have been destroyed. Security concerns that have been present for some time may be heightened due to the desperation and lack of resources.  If student service learning projects were to take place as a relief effort, they are likely to have negative consequences to the country’s residents by using limited resources and by not being sufficiently planned or appropriately directed.

TAAA recognizes that the rebuilding process of Haiti will take place over a long period of time.  Over the course of the process, the resources and skills necessary are likely to change, and the work of TAAA will adapt with these changes.  As part of the rebuilding process, it is essential for the initiative to build upon the assets of Haiti and to focus on capacity building and sustainable change.  The purpose of each service learning project will be to educate students and to build skills and increase resources among Haitians communities and organizations.

TAAA serves as an example of a budding initiative that, through thoughtful planning and genuine partnership, hopes to leave a positive legacy within the University of Michigan and communities in Haiti.  

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edited by: Daniel Strauss