A three-judge federal appeals court panel has revealed that they would provide incentives to people who would come forward to donate their bone marrow cells. It should however be noted that this regulation would not be covered in the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act as it forbids any kind of payment for organs such as kidneys, lungs or eyes.

In this type of donation, marrow cells would be extracted from the donors’ blood through five course medication which is meant to stimulate the production of the cells. This is quite different from conventional treatment where bone marrow is directly taken from the hip bone.

It was very important to announce such kind of incentive, said U. S. appellate Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld. He further affirmed that yearly, 5,000 Americans have to undergo bone marrow transplants. It has not happened for the first time that one is being paid for donating something. This barter system is already in existence at the time when it comes to donating blood.

Jeff Rowes, lead counsel for the plaintiffs and senior attorney at the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, said, “We will be able to experiment with the strategic use of compensation to increase the number of donors and determine if it is true in this context what's true in every other context”.

It seems that not everyone is happy with this ruling. Chief Strategy Officer at the National Marrow Donor Program, Michael Boo was of the view that this deal can also turn out disastrous for patients as it would give birth to expectation of compensation which could interfere in patient’s treatment.

The American Medical Association has asked to take out a study in which this new measure’s effectiveness could be studied.