Facebook Inc. took a momentous action last week. And I don’t mean its announced intention to sell shares for $28 to $35 in an initial public offering later this month.

Roughly 10% of all organ transplants in the world are obtained on the black market. A new investigation by puts a brutal face on that underground world.

In October of 2009, Kumud Majumder, the father of an 11-year-old son with advanced leukemia, joined a lawsuit challenging the federal ban on compensating bone-marrow donors. He wanted to save his son's life. Last week Mr. Majumder and his co-plaintiffs enjoyed a victory. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the majority of bone-marrow donors may lawfully be compensated.

This year, more than 100,000 Americans will be diagnosed with a potentially deadly blood disease. Among those in need of lifesaving, blood-producing marrow cells, thousands will die because it is so difficult to find a nearly perfect genetic match and marrow donors are in short supply.

Material incentives, from tax credits...

The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 should be changed or repealed to allow markets for transplant organs to form.

To help remedy the organ shortage, the District of Columbia should pass a law enabling donors to receive benefits for their sacrifice.

Did Steve Jobs' wealth buy him a faster liver transplant? It certainly helped--and the Apple CEO's odyssey showcases some of the problems with organ donations in America.

It is time for a state to challenge the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act and offer funeral benefits or some other reward to the estate of those who will give their organs at death.