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.

As ingenious, painstaking and justifiably attention-getting as domino swaps are, they should not blot out the dismal news that rates of kidney donation, from both living and deceased donors, fall woefully short of the need.

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.

Altruism is simply not enough to satisfy the global organ shortage that has spawned illegal and unregulated organ markets, so government-sponsored compensation of healthy of individuals who are willing to give one of their kidneys is the best short-term solution.

We should offer well-informed individuals a reward if they are willing to save a stranger's life.

With the new health-care plan, hospitals will be accountable for the patient health of their regional area, with no competition innovation is unlikely.

Many of the quandaries that plague transplant medicine flow from the need to ration scarce resources.

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.