In an effort to increase living organ donation, 15 states passed tax deductions and 1 a tax credit to help defray potential medical, lodging and wage loss costs between 2004 and 2008. To assess the impact of these policies on living donation rates, we used a differences-in-differences strategy which compares the pre- and post-legislation change in living donations in states that passed legislation against the same change in those states that did not. We found no statistically significant effect of these tax policies on donation rates. Furthermore, we found no evidence of any lagged effects, differential impacts by gender, race or donor relationship, or impacts on deceased donation. Possible hypotheses to explain our findings are: the cash value of the tax deduction may be too low to defray costs faced by donors, lack of public awareness about the existence of these policies, and that states that were proactive enough to pass tax policy laws may have already depleted donor pools with pr
Dr Joseph Murray, who won the Nobel prize for his pioneering work in human organ transplants, has died aged 93. It was in December 1954 that Dr Murray successfully transplanted a kidney between identical twins for the first time. His work paved the way for tens of thousands of other successful human organ transplants.