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.

How many lives will recent criticism of the FDA by camera-keen congressmencost when promising new treatments are kept out the hands of patients who otherwise are going to die?

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.

Organ transplantation, like many areas of medicine, provides a poor basis fora political thesis that single-payer health care offers a more equitable allocation of scarce resources.

Contrary to John Edwards's populist rhetoric, the United States performs more organ transplants per capita than countries with single-payer health care systems, with better outcomes.

The Norwood Act is specifically designed to help patients who already have a willing donor but cannot receivea kidney transplant because of biological incompatibility.

The National Kidney Foundation's recalcitrance on financial incentives for organ donors is hurting the very constituency it purports to serve.