Philanthropy is about more than giving piles of money away. As experts on the topic often note, parting with your time, talent and treasure to help others all count.

Perhaps the most precious thing you can give away is an organ that will help someone else survive – most commonly a kidney. And while kidney donation is on the rise, the number of patients who need transplants is increasing at a faster pace, explains Amit Tevar, who directs the kidney and pancreas transplant program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Tevar is excited about an executive order President Trump recently signed that’s aimed at improving care for people with kidney disease and boosting the number of transplants. If donating kidneys becomes easier to do as a result, “doctors like me could be saving hundreds of thousands more people,” he writes.

Also today: recalling H. Ross Perot’s fears about free trade, the showdown over academic publishing and why midlife has become a crisis for so many in the U.S.

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Will this help the thousands of Americans who need a kidney transplant get one in time? Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Trump’s order for more action on kidney disease may shrink organ transplant waitlists

Amit Tevar, University of Pittsburgh

The need for organs to transplant far exceeds the supply.

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Today’s quote

The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, concluded that the U.S. lost about 850,000 jobs from 1993 to 2013 as a result of NAFTA and that number has undoubtedly risen.

 

The ‘giant sucking sound’ of NAFTA: Ross Perot was ridiculed as alarmist in 1992 but his warning turned out to be prescient

 

Harley Shaiken

University of California, Berkeley

Harley Shaiken
 
 

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