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.

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.

Governments must provide in-kind incentives in order to spur organ donations, as altruism cannot be the sole legitimate motive for donating, and to achieve the true end of saving more lives.

Why can't our opponents be reasonable? In his new book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of morality in our rapid and automatic moral intuitions.

We must enable more patients in wealthy countries to obtain transplants at home by empowering their governments, under strict regulation, to offer incentives to prospective donors.

Congress must permit donors to accept third-party benefits for saving the life of a stranger, otherwise desperate patients and donors will continue to be reluctant co-conspirators in crime.