For sale: One kidney

Yesterday my friend Josh Koo had a kind of tongue in cheek one-liner about the tooth fairy teaching children about selling body parts. The line got me thinking about the actual sale of body parts - in particular kidneys. According to the National Kidney Institute (NKI), there are over 60,000 Americans currently waiting (dying) to get a new kidney. These people wait desperately for young Americans to perish and give away their organs. These patients are currently suffering and living only through a kidney dialysis machine. (These machines, by the way, according to the NKI, cost the government 18 billion dollars a year!) Most kidney patients would do, and pay absolutely anything for a functioning kidney. Do you all remember the story a few years ago when a woman put one of her two kidneys up for sale on eBay and the price reached six million dollars? This got me thinking... We live in a free-market, capitalistic society. I currently have two functioning kidneys. If I get very down on my luck, and I want to donate one of my kidneys to save another life and maybe pocket a pretty penny or two in the mean time, why should the government stop me. I can just hear the critics yelling, "It's cannibalism!", "It's gross.", "It is immoral." So? When did the government get to decide what is gross and immoral? That's my job. As for cannibalism, if my sister gets ill, I have a right to donate my kidney to her. Is that cannibalism? However, after a 1984 law introduced by your Albert Gore passed 396-6, giving my sister one of my kidneys is benevolent and giving my kidney to an ill neighbor is a felony. I have always said the number one role of government is to protect its people? Protect us from bad drinking water. Protect us from crime and terrorism. Et cetera. Who is the government protecting on this one? The Bible belt? The law is not going to be changed anytime soon. I just feel this is a time when I agree with social conservatives/libertarians that argue that sometimes our federal government becomes too activist. If you don't like gay marriage, don't have one. If you don't like sick kidney patients buying healthy kidneys from willing donors, then when you get sick, wait on the donor list. But don't judge me.

1. I love the story of the Missouri man who won one of the biggest Powerball jackpots ever at $258 million. He is from a tiny town in central Missouri, has little education, only has a few teeth left, and works at a gas station. He now is worth a quarter of a billion dollars.

2. I was not even paying attention and I just ate a whole tub of hummus this evening. I'm not even mad. Hummus is that good.

3. Speaking of food, did you see there will be a Food Network 2. The Food Network has described the new network as "grittier, edgier, and hipper." Huh?

4. Did anyone else read in the paper about 7/11 beer? Natural Light and Keystone Light could have a competitor in Ames, IA.