A Riveting Feel-Good Story

The Times reminds us why they are the greatest paper in the world with a fascinating account of kidney donation chains.

To illustrate with a simple example - John would be delighted to donate a kidney to help his daughter Sally, but he is not a good genetic match; Martha would be delighted to help her cousin Bill, but they don't match either. 

However!  If all four people register with the National Kidney Registry, they may discover that John is a match for Bill and Martha is a match for Sally, in which case, everyone wins. Using high-tech computer skills, the NKR team puts together much longer daisy chains:

As a dawn chill broke over Chicago on Dec. 20, Mr. Terry received a plump pink kidney in a transplant at Loyola University Medical Center. He did not get it from Mr. Ruzzamenti, at least not directly, but the two men will forever share a connection: they were the first and last patients in the longest chain of kidney transplants ever constructed, linking 30 people who were willing to give up an organ with 30 who might have died without one.

What made the domino chain of 60 operations possible was the willingness of a Good Samaritan, Mr. Ruzzamenti, to give the initial kidney, expecting nothing in return. Its momentum was then fueled by a mix of selflessness and self-interest among donors who gave a kidney to a stranger after learning they could not donate to a loved one because of incompatible blood types or antibodies. Their loved ones, in turn, were offered compatible kidneys as part of the exchange.

Chain 124, as it was labeled by the nonprofit National Kidney Registry, required lockstep coordination over four months among 17 hospitals in 11 states. It was born of innovations in computer matching, surgical technique and organ shipping, as well as the determination of a Long Island businessman named Garet Hil, who was inspired by his own daughter’s illness to supercharge the notion of “paying it forward.”

This is an inspiring feel-good story, which is fine, since public awareness and support makes this networking effort even more successful, so the Times does not poke at a couple of questions that might break the mood.  But here we go:

1.  Hey, those one-percenters are good for something!  Let's hear about the founder:

Garet Hil and his wife, Jan, may never fully recover from the snowy night in February 2007 when they took their 10-year-old daughter in with flu symptoms and emerged with a shocking diagnosis of nephrophthisis, a genetic kidney-wasting disease. They could not imagine sacrificing her youth to dialysis.

Because Mr. Hil and his daughter shared the same blood type, he assumed he would be able to give her one of his kidneys. But two days before surgery, doctors canceled the operations after discovering that his daughter had developed antibodies that would most likely cause rejection.

Jan Hil and six other family members volunteered but were also ruled out. Mr. Hil and his daughter joined several of the registries that had started to arrange kidney exchanges, but the pools were small and they never found a match. Fortunately, one of Mr. Hil’s nephews then was tested and was able to donate.

After the successful transplant, Mr. Hil, a veteran business executive, could not shake his frustration that a more effective registry for paired kidney donation did not exist. “The exchange systems out there weren’t industrial strength,” he said.

By the end of 2007, the Hils had formed the National Kidney Registry and rented office space in an old clapboard house in Babylon, N.Y. The couple invested about $300,000 to start it, and Mr. Hil, who is now 49, ran the registry without a salary.

“The goal was very simple: get everybody transplanted in under six months if you had a living donor,” he said. “One of the things that drove us was the enormity of the problem. The other thing that drove us was that we understood the pain of being in that situation.”

Mr. Hil turned out to be the right person to infuse the budding science of kidney exchange with an entrepreneurial spark. A former Marine reconnaissance ranger with an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, he had managed a series of data and logistics companies in Boston and New York and understood the worlds of both computing and finance.

He had made his money and could step off the career track to give the registry his time and the resources of his software-consulting firm. He had a background in quantitative math and enough drive to plow through medical texts about organ compatibility. Over time, he led a team in designing sophisticated software that evolved to build ever-longer chains.

Disney-hero handsome, with a cleft chin and thick wavy hair, Mr. Hil marketed his registry to hospitals with PowerPoints and passion. The transplant world initially regarded him as an interloper. But he has now persuaded 58 of the country’s 236 kidney transplant centers, including many of the largest, to feed his database with information about pairs of transplant candidates and their incompatible donors.

They aren't kidding about the handsome, based on this pic from the organization website.  Left unexplored - how did he accomplish all this without a Federal program or Congressional hearings?

Apparently competition is maybe not so bad - from a year-old story about an earlier chain we glean this:

Last fall, the United Network for Organ Sharing, an organization that oversees the nation's organ and transplant network, finally began its long-awaited pilot program that will attempt to do just that and link all of the eligible patients from the nation's more than 200 transplant centers.

But Garet Hil, founder and president of the National Kidney Registry in Babylon, N.Y., which organized the 32-person chain, said UNOS's pilot program "is a failure."

Mr. Hil, who runs a consulting and software development company, sits on the Kidney Paired Donation Pilot working group that has been trying to make the program work.

"I've witnessed a program with a flawed design, working in a bureaucratic way that's not going to get many people transplanted," he said Friday in a phone interview. "The program has been out since October and it's only done two transplants and we've done 60 since then -- including this chain" of which UPMC was a part.

He argues that his registry -- which he started three years after enduring struggles to get his 10-year-old daughter a kidney transplant -- is already a truly national program because it represents 55 transplant centers that collectively do about two-thirds of all transplants in the United States.

Eventually, he hopes, his registry will become the official national program.

"The transplant centers are going to vote by joining the registry," he said, noting that UPMC signed on with the registry late last year.

He has a host of criticisms with the pilot program, including that it allows only small chains that would give just two or three people new kidneys at a time, while the National Kidney Registry runs chains, like this recent one, where dozens of people get new kidneys.

Ken Andreoni, an Ohio State University transplant surgeon who chairs UNOS's kidney committee, has heard Mr. Hil's arguments and concerns before and he believes he's just being too impatient.

"I'm in this for the 50-year- and 100-year-long issues," he said, adding that they will take time to solve.

He concedes the pilot program is slowed by the bureaucracy of having to follow rigid rules that aim to maximize successful transplants and minimize risk.

But that's the price you pay when you're creating what is to be a real national program that answers to everyone, unlike Mr. Hil's registry.

50 years?  What's the hurry?

Finally, these chains are often launched by Good Samaritan donors.  Should we pay volunteer donors?  This very tricky question is tackled in The Lancet.

Comments

[Not Sara]

Bureaucracy loses every time.

[Danube of Thought]

The Invisible Hand. I'd like to see a lot more of it.

[Captain Hate]

From the Lancet: Or perhaps it is just because there are some things, such as human organs, which are too precious to be treated as general goods and so should not be subject to the usual laws of economics.

[Danube of Thought]

"so should not be subject to the usual laws of economics"

Let me guess: those "usual laws" should give way to the decisions of experts.

[Paul Zrimsek]

Now that they've discovered the magic of barter, can money be far behind?

[Gmax]

Isnt there a point in time when you have enough kidneys?

[Ignatz]

--Isnt there a point in time when you have enough kidneys?--

That can only be determined by analyzing the 'kidney-earnings ratio'.

[Danube of Thought]

They've probably got tons of profit in their overhead.

[MarkO]

Citizens, if you are, lend me your kidneys.

[Gmax]

Oh and the third indicator of the coming tsunami, the Iowa poll today has Obama losing to three of the four Republicans. This is a state that he carried by TEN last go around.

[Threadkiller]

No more telling grandma to take a pain pill instead?

[Jack is Back!]

Some of you may be fans of the FX series "Justified". It is based on a character created by Elmore Leonard. I am reading his latest: Raylan. That be Raylan Givens, U. S. Marshal Service, currently domiciled in Harlan, Kentucky.

In the book Raylan goes after a case of stolen kidneys that are used as ransom by selling them back to the person they stole them from. Little know fact is that in modern kidney removal and transplants they go in from the front.

Good read, tremendous dialogue and a cast of characters even JOM can't rival.

[Ignatz]

--Good read, tremendous dialogue and a cast of characters even JOM can't rival.--

Any pictures of Fibonacci rumps?
If not I seriously question the comparison. :)

[jimmyk]

Not to seem too negative, but with 400,000 on dialysis, nearly 100,000 on the transplant waiting list, only 17,000 actual transplants/year, the few hundred enabled by this (or couple thousand hypothetically according to the mathematical models) are a drop in the bucket. A lot of people are dying because we're not allowing markets to work.

[Jack is Back!]

Blame it all on Rousseau.

Mark Tapscott in the Washington Examiner

But the Left has been attacking traditional religious and family insitutitons for centuries, so, in relentlessly pushing these kinds of anti-faith initiatives, Obama is merely being true to his ideological roots. He is very much a product of the radical center of the Democratic Party, with its origins in the far-left student movements of the 1960s.

The intensity of reaction to the HHS rule likely confirmed for Obama and his strategists the rightness of their effort. As Bell puts it to Taranto, "they were determined to push it through, because it's their irreplaceable ideological core. . . . The Left keeps putting these issues into the mix, and they do it very deliberately, and I think they do it as a matter of principle."

The opening line of Jean Jacque Rousseau's The Social Contract tells the story here: "Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains." With that sentence, Rousseau captured the essential principle driving the Left's view of society, economics, law, everthing: In the state of nature where men are born, complete freedom reigns.

But when men organize themselves into societies, convention (also known as habit or tradition) suffocates this natural freedom, making men slaves to kings, priests and tradition. Thus, the fundamental goal of left-wing ideology is always, in one way or another and to a greater or lesser degree, to liberate men from convention.

Read the whole thing.

Which reminds me, the best slogan still is "Citizen or Subject, Your Choice, not Mine - Obama 2012"

[Jack is Back!]

jimmyk,

Makes you wonder why they haven't invented an "artificial kidney" without need of dialysis support? Well, this is from 2010 and I don't know how much progress he is making.

[Stephanie]

Can't you just take a pill and grow a new kidney? I know I saw it in a movie so it must be true.
- reality based voter

[Ignatz]

--the few hundred enabled by this (or couple thousand hypothetically according to the mathematical models) are a drop in the bucket--

Not if you're one of the drops.
Then it's the whole world.

[Clarice]

Time has certainly proven that rotten hypocrite Rousseau wrong on everything. I maintain he's the patron saint of the hippies and now the Occupiers.

[Jack is Back!]

Who said it isn't War?

Priest is arrested outside the WH kneeling in prayer while the OWS crowd throws grenades and not a whimper.

Unbelievable. On second thought, really, very much, mucho believable.

[hit and run]

Anything similar being done with livers?

Not for me. I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, um, a friend who thinks he might have liver problems down the road for some reason. It's for a friend.

[AliceH]

That's strikes me as an obvious next-generation function of that kidney exchange -- expand from chain of kidneys to I'll swap a kidney for a lung (or liver).

[Jack is Back!]

Jane, Rocco, TC and Dave(inMA),

Does this sound right? Scott Brown opens up 9pt. lead on Elizabeth Warren.

[hit and run]

Dang. Yesterday I was sitting in the driveway in mid 60s weather praising global warming.

We're in a virtual blizzard today.

This is the first real snow we've gotten this winter so it is not unwelcome in that respect.

But with mrs hit and run out of town,if the kids' school is closed tomorrow,we're gonna have some issues...

[jimmyk]

Speaking of feel-good, has this been posted?

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/02/capitol-one-spokesman-alec-baldwin-calls-andrew-breitbart-a-festering-boil-on-anus-of-public-discourse/

Alec Baldwin Calls Andrew Breitbart: "A Festering Boil on Anus of Public Discourse"

Breitbart responds: "There’s NO REASON you should talk to me like I’m your daughter!"

[Jane]

Yup JIB, that came out last week. It might get SCott some momentum.

[Janet]

Yeah Breitbart!...great response.

Loved your 3:07 link, JiB -

"But sooner or later, leftists like Obama - as well as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, etc. etc. - always push for more and more regulation. And off at the end, their ultimate purpose is to subordinate traditional institutions entirely to the bureaucratic dictates of the all-powerful state."

[geezer]

TK

If I heard right

Grandma is to hold a pain pill between her knees?

[Gmax]

JiB lots Irish American and Italian American Catholics in Massachusetts, plus Lizzie threw in with the Occupoopers.

[Ignatz]

--Breitbart responds: "There’s NO REASON you should talk to me like I’m your daughter!"--

LOL. Does bgates write Andrew's stuff?

[Jane]

Breitbart retweets every single bad thing said about him - and endless bad things are said about him. It's like a cottage industry.

Santorum seems to be running into a few snafus, particularly regarding faith stuff. Is anyone else seeing that?

[Gmax]

Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, is releasing a national tv ad for President's Day reminding us we are One Nation, Under God...

OK is there any left still contending this is working for Zero or that Catholics are going to back down? Stand and be recognized...

[Jack is Back!]

Didn't know this: Hitler had a son and there may be grandchildren. Yikes!

[Jack is Back!]

Gmax,

What these idiot political campaign and progs in the Regime are forgetting is that there are a lot of Catholics beyond child-bearing age to which this is a BIG DEAL. And they go to church regularly since as you know the older you get the more you go "hey lets play it safe and make sure we have a clean slate".

Let the progs play their best Pauline Kael impersanation.

[jimmyk]

Santorum seems to be running into a few snafus, particularly regarding faith stuff. Is anyone else seeing that?

I know that the MSM is intentionally blurring the distinction between his own personal views (e.g. toward contraception) and his policy views. He needs to really fight back on that because otherwise he'll be viewed as the guy who's going to be raiding your bedroom.

[Jane]

I'd say Mr Loret has handled himself just fine JIB.

[Clarice]

hit, there are great free lesson plans online--download them and play little red schoolhouse--

[Gmax]

Jack it was clear from the weekly Gallup poll, that the only jazzed up folks were yutes and Blacks. While Zero needs them, he bleeding off bitter clingers everywhere and this assault on freedom of religion is going to textbook stuff, how you dont run a reelection campaign. They will study it like McGovern promising to raise taxes...

[Jane]

I know that the MSM is intentionally blurring the distinction between his own personal views (e.g. toward contraception) and his policy views.

I agree, in complete contradiction to what I've heard him say. He made some comment about "Obama's not really a Christian" or something like that and the Fox commenters were all freaked out about it. (He needs to grow some Donald Trump.) I do see most talking heads writing him off as a result.

[Rick Ballard]

Jane,

Stand back - he's on a roll.

I believe he intended to impart the opinion that the President has as good a grasp of theology as he does of economics in the sense that "From each according to his ability" cannot be found in The Wealth of Nations any more than "Am I my brothers keeper?" is a call to charity.

Today was a day auspicious for the stapling of tongue to lower lip on his part. It's a pity he missed the chance to do so.

[jimmyk]

Now if anyone can find evidence that Mr Loret might have fathered Frank Marshall Davis, we might be onto something.

[hit and run]

jimmyk:
he'll be viewed as the guy who's going to be raiding your bedroom.

Oh,gosh,no. I think poor Rick would run shrieking in horror if he raided my bedroom at the wrong time.

I mean,we're talking some really dirty stuff between mrs hit and run and me.

Round about Thursday the laundry piles up in our bedroom. It's not a pretty sight.

[hit and run]

Clarice:
there are great free lesson plans online--download them and play little red schoolhouse

Yeah,the problem is I have a big meeting tomorrow that would go much more smoothly if I was there in person.

I can handle the kids. It's the job that's the dang problem.

Why don't I just accept Obama-handouts. Would be so much easier.

[Jack is Back!]

Jane,

You're right about M. Loret. My comment was more tongue-in-cheek than outright worry. But as my Grandfather told me genes skip a generation and that is something to consider as jimmyk proffers:)

[Jack is Back!]

BTW, over at Ace's he is once again about 2 or 3 hours behind us. Just now bringing up the need for a new Obama campaign slogan. Some of the suggestions are pretty good but not as good as ours. Nyah, nyah, de, nah, nah.

[hit and run]

JiB:
BTW, over at Ace's he is once again

For the record,it's not Ace. Ace is M.I.A.

He might have had more than one beer -- that usually does him in for an entire weekend.

[hit and run]

I totally meant to do that.

[Ignatz]

--He might have had more than one beer -- that usually does him in for an entire weekend.--

Has anyone ever seen Ace and Allahpundit in the same place at the same time?

[hit and run]

Ignatz:
Has anyone ever seen Ace and Allahpundit in the same place at the same time?

Heh. Yes. Not me,but there are stories. Trustworthy stories? Well. If it's on the internet it must be true.

I've been email buddies with both of them at varying points over the past few years.

But I think Captain Ed could drink either one of them under the table.

[Danube of Thought]

"Is anyone else seeing that?"

Been seeing it for a long time.

Elmore Leonard has the best ear for dialogue of anyone writing today.

[Jane]

I dunno Rick. It seems to me the left should be pushing Santorum because he is probably not palatable to the indy's. I wish Fox at least would tell the Obama campaign to get over itself. The cumulative outrage over any comment that doesn't paint Obama as the 2nd coming is breathtaking.

Here is a perfect illustration of my point.

[Ignatz]

--I've been email buddies with both of them at varying points over the past few years.--

Somewhat cryptic.
Did these varying times actually overlap?

[hit and run]

Yes.

But that doesn't mean that the same person couldn't have managed two email accounts.

You should see the number of JOM cybot email accounts I maintain.

Crazy.

[Manuel Transmission]

They just had a couple of episodes of Justified with a prison punk faking the removal of both kidneys from one of the regulars, then that leading to the scammers actually being pulled into the story.

Love that show. Got to be the best on the tube these days. The one-liners and under-the-breath comments are hysterical.

[Rick Ballard]

Jane,

It's dangerous territory for BOzo. He's got 20 years at Hate Whitey United under his belt, listing to Comrade Goddam Amerikkka Wright preaching the Gospel of Karl Marx.

I could blend the imbecility of his economics together with his race hatred theology without breaking a sweat.

The proglodytes have their "Bain is to capitalism as coyotes disemboweling a fawn is to nature" game plan printed, bound and issued. The "Santorum wants to hide under your bed" bit is actually easier to turn. The Kendonesian commie has czars watching your every move, from crack of dawn to crack of the next dawn, with the Big Mooch swinging a whip over their pointy heads.

There's room for a nice boomerang on that one.

[Jack is Back!]

MT,

Get the book and read it. I have to chuckle once or twice each page. Mrs. JiB looks at me like I am nuts:)

[Ignatz]

--You should see the number of JOM cybot email accounts I maintain.

Crazy.--

Aren't you me?
Not sure who to be more sorry for if true.

[Jane]

There's room for a nice boomerang on that one.

I hope so. We are living in a double standard society and I'm almost convinced that Obama wants to go back to segregation with the whites working for the (black) man - (or the bundler).

[Captain Hate]

Incredible play at the end of the Northern Trust Open.

[Clarice]

I'm sorry to say it looks more and more like Althouse is going over to the dark side again with her reference to Santorumite today. what are the odds she's already filled out an absentee ballot for Obama?

I finally looked at today's Wa Po Business Section--front page a Keynesian slosh to the effect that our natonal debt is nothing to fret about. I suppose the author is the paper's own financial advisor and Pinch's , too.

The inside piece was a sob story about a rural town of 250 losing its Post Office and whatever will they do? Here's two idea: (1) Pay a local l business to place machines inside like our local P.O. has which weighs packages, sells the postage and holds the boxes until the postman shows up --or--(2) if there is not such store, turn the P.O. over to the people as a community hall provided they leave room for such machines.
Consider what the cost of maintaining the post office and paying the postmaster to serve 250 people is.The author of the piece, naturally doesn't say.

[hit and run]

Clarice . . . a timely reminder:

Never Mess Around With the U.S. Mail

[Clarice]

Ahhh, Hit.......

[narciso]

Among many great reasons for that show, in the LUN.

[Captain Hate]

I'm sorry to say it looks more and more like Althouse is going over to the dark side again

Do you find this surprising? She's been littering her site with droppings of this for three years despite the efforts of bgates to ridicule it out of her.

[AliceH]

There was an uproar around these parts when the post office in the town just south of me (pop 250) was announced to be closing. Poor people were being told they had to do their post office business in my town's post office, which was a whole 1 or 2 miles further away. Oh - they are losing their zip code. Funniest complaint was that there would be too much traffic and trouble parking - in my town of pop 1200...

The really funny part of this is that the protests about the closing were pretty much as loud and adamant and "reasoned" as they were about 20 years ago when the controversy was about being assigned a new zip code and getting their own post office.

[AliceH]

(Of course, I love my little town... all our issues are strictly human scale.)

[Jack is Back!]

Geez, I have a PO at the adult education complex off of A1A in a small hamlet of less than 250 or I can go over the toll bridge to the Shell station which has a PO operated by the convenience store inside. Get creative people.

[Clarice]

Don't you imagine that a real journalist would have included alongside the whining, the cost of the present system and perhaps even a picture of the automated services available to everyone in DC where the paper is published?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Not if you're one of the drops.
Then it's the whole world.

Needed emphasis.

[Jane]

The PO has asked for a 5 cent raise in the cost of stamps - to 50 cents.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Yeah,the problem is I have a big meeting tomorrow that would go much more smoothly if I was there in person.

Wait, hit, you're in North Carolina, no? If its snowing and you go to the office tomorrow, you're sure to be there alone.

Used to drive me crazy in Durham: an inch of powder overnight. a beautiful clear sunny morning, the the whole damn town shut down.

[Jack is Back!]

Jane,

Anachroism, Inc. could ask for a $5.00 stamp and they would still lose money just paying the pensions of retired mail carriers.

Just yesterday we got our mail and mail for 3 separate other people that we have to either trash or put back in the box with "wrong address" on it.

Doing the work the Post Office can't do or won't do.

[AliceH]

How much do they charge, say, L.L. Bean to send me 25 catalogs a month?

I read somewhere that the USPS has essentially become a tax-payer subsidized direct mail operation.

[narciso]

Was it a piece along these lines, Alice;

http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120116/NEWS01/201160322

[jimmyk]

Needed emphasis.

Yeah, because the point of my post really was to pooh-pooh the lives saved by the chains. It wasn't at all about the fact that thousands more could be saved with a more market-based system. Thanks, guys.

[hit and run]

Chaco:
an inch of powder overnight. a beautiful clear sunny morning, the the whole damn town shut down.

Indeed. We've gotten about three inches and it's still coming down. But yup,schools are closed tomorrow.

[AliceH]

Oh my goodness, no, narciso. That article doesn't have any whininess to speak of.

Complaints captured in my local paper included:

"It was noted that presently there were several individuals who walked daily to the Arcadia post office, and that moving the post office almost a mile away would pose a burden and inconvenience on these customers."

"'When court is in session parking [by the new post office] is a problem now. Adding another 264 post office boxes at that location is obviously going to create more of a problem.'" and

"[A resident] said that consolidating the offices would create an inconvenience to the public and that the post office 'needed to think about serving the people'"

[peter]

In Captiva with the family for Prez' week. Lots of love to my JOM buddies!

[narciso]

Is 'wishful thinking' a requirement for flag
rank, or whatever the Army equivalent is;

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/02/19/chairman-of-the-joint-chiefs-the-iranian-regime-is-a-rational-actor/#comments

[Jane]

Have fun Peter. (I don't even know where Captiva is)

[Clarice]

How lovely, peter. I know you'll be having a great time.

[Clarice]

It's off the West Coast of Florida in the Gulf below Sanibel and above Naples. Really nice.

[Porchlight]

OT,

T-20 minutes to Downton Abbey season finale.

peter, I hope you're having a wonderful time!

[Clarice]

Hit, if Claire gets home and finds out you've been having the kids fill in a homemade crossword puzzles with the names of beers as the answers, I do not think she'll be happy.

And the "How to Use a Chainsaw" primer you wrote , while clever,should be scrapped as well.

[narciso]

Couldn't happen to nicer banksters;

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2012/02/goldman-sachs-caught-sharia-catch-22/283801#.T0EBfwqwRBI.twitter

[Ignatz]

--Yeah, because the point of my post really was to pooh-pooh the lives saved by the chains. It wasn't at all about the fact that thousands more could be saved with a more market-based system. Thanks, guys.--

I wasn't criticizing what you said, jimmy.
You're quite correct, but the drops sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
It's kind of personal for me because my wife could have been one of the drops if only she had done her mammograms. A vaguely similar discussion has been had about whether mass mammograms are a good idea and it's just as valid an argument from a public policy perspective.
But if you're one of that 10% of women who are going to get breast cancer and one of the even smaller number who will have it caught early enough by mammogram, then it's irrelevant to that person what the public policy is; it's her whole world.

[narciso]

LOL, that's like the Cosby routine, when he serves up chocolate cake, for breakfast

[Thomas Collins]

See LUN for a good article illustrating that the notion that there is no interest in Shariah compliant finance is nonsense. Shariah compliant finance includes as an essential component compensation for the use of money. Such compensation, which in substance is interest, is not called interest in Shariah compliant finance. In the case discussed in the LUN, it is classified as rent. What it is in substance is fakery.

[Stephanie]

Hopefully Claire won't do what Lil Jeffery's mom did when she finally saw her husband, narc.

I'd advise a nice Zinfandel and some bandages as back up.

[Sandy Daze]

Two items re the Executive trampling on the First Amendment.
--Bulletin at Mass today contained this insert from the USCCB.
--Great short video discussion via the Anchoress at Word On Fire, Fr. Barron comments on the HHS Mandate: Anti-Catholic and Un-American

Fr Barron's discussion is solid. Wish we had politicians who were able to speak as clearly.

OMG~ABO,
Sandy

[Jack is Back!]

Did you see the Nexus search that turned up 7 references just today to Downton Abbey in the NY Times?

So y'all are joining the Upper West Side cabal, eh?

[hit and run]

Hey now. mrs hit and run is the one off gallavanting on the other side of the country with her sis and our niece. Tequila is involved.

I on the other hand got to see princess hit and run's first piano recital today.

[Jack is Back!]

Sandy,

Gmax got it in the homily and we got the insert at our parish.

Its on and Dolan has his marching orders. What a stupid fight to pick.

1-21-13 End of an Error

[sbw]

TC, Christianity had to wrap its brain around the interest is unChristian in the Middle Ages. They started by allowing Jews to be the bankers since, in their opinion, they were going to Hell anyway.

Churches have skeletons in their closets, too.

[Thomas Collins]

Do you happen to know, sbw, whether Islam ever abandoned the interest prohibition and revived it with the modern Shariah compliant finance? Or has Islam always covered up what compensation for the use of money really is? I am not familiar with how the views of the monotheistic religions on whether to call interest interest evolved (or stagnated) over time.

[narciso]

The 'usual suspects' are on the case, I think the Party of Moloch is not too much of an understatement

http://bigjournalism.com/dloesch/2012/02/18/false-narrative-abounds-over-virginias-sonogram-law/#idc-cover

[Clarice]

Other religions also have recognized that practical modern life sometimes requires a compromise. Orthodox Jews are supposed to dispose pf all non Passover prepared leavened or unleavened food in a household's possession which is a prohibitive expense and generally congregations find a willing gentile to whom they sell all this ("humetz") to for a nominal sum. This person then sells it back to them for the same sum after the days of Passover.

I hae no problem with that aspect of sharia at all.

Orthodox Jews are also not supposed to charge each other interest on loans and use a similar device to the Moslem work around though I cannot remember the exact details.

[Thomas Collins]

And I'll bet every note the princess hit resonated in the proud dad's heart, H&R. Congrats to the princess!

[Strawman Cometh]

But yup,schools are closed tomorrow.
Hit, it's Presidents Day.

[Thomas Collins]

Clarice, I think the issue with Shariah compliant finance is the additional costs it imposes on the international financial system, and whether such costs are essentially a function of a modern construct for the dhimmis (as the article I LUNed argues). I think the situation with Orthodox Judaism is different. The financial practices of Orthodox Judaism, to my knowledge, are not being promoted as appropriately being a substantial factor in the international financial system.