Bone marrow donors can be paid, says appeals court

A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that most bone marrow donors can be compensated for their donations.

Accepting payment for donating bone marrow had been prohibited under the National Organ Transplant Act since 1984, although donors were allowed to accept payment for renewable tissues such as blood, Reuters reported. It’s still illegal for people to sell their kidneys and other organs.

According to the San Francisco Gate:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a lower court ruling, limits compensation to donors who donate marrow through a newer technology that takes the cells from the person's bloodstream rather than with a needle that extracts the cells from the hip bone. This newer method, called apheresis, now accounts for about 70 percent of all bone marrow donations.

"Once the stem cells are in the bloodstream, they are a subpart of the blood, not the bone marrow," Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote, according to Reuters, making the process more like donating blood than donating an organ.

The lawsuit was filed by lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice on behalf of patients, doctors and MoreMarrowDonors.org, The Associated Press reported.

MoreMarrowDonors.org had sought to pay marrow donors $3,000 in a scholarship, housing allowance or gift to charity to encourage more people to donate, the AP reported. Nearly 3,000 Americans die each year because they cannot find a matching donor, the plaintiffs said, according to the San Francisco Gate.

"This decision fundamentally changes how deadly blood diseases will be treated in America," Jeff Rowes, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice and lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told Reuters.