Yes, $1500 would be pretty competitive with GiveWell’s top charities, and possibly better.
A few comments:
Maybe some workplaces would consider giving you extra paid time off to do this. If not, you can use sick/personal days. If you’re earning to give or otherwise don’t do direct work, then the lost time might not be much of a loss at all.
Does the time estimate include recovery time in bed?
The estimate doesn’t really consider the counterfactual. You’d want to know the probability that the person you would have helped (or another person in their place) would have died had you not donated. That probability is not 1, because they might have been saved by someone else instead, and you would want to adjust the cost-effectiveness based on this probability. Maybe another way of putting it is this: what percentage of people who sign up for this actually end up donating? This won’t give you the right probability I mentioned just before, but it will tell you something about it: if almost everyone who signs up ends up donating, then the probability that an extra person gets a donation if you donate is also close to 1.
For the time estimate question, this video seems to be saying that donation takes 3-4 hours and recovery is maybe 1 hour. The website gives more information:
Side effects may include back pain, fatigue, headache or bruising for a few days or weeks.
The counterfactual comparison is a good point. I couldn’t find any information about it on the website, but Wikipedia reports:
Because the odds that two random individuals are HLA matched exceeds one in 20,000, a registry’s success depends on a large number of volunteer donors.
Wikipedia also reports that the Be the Match registry has about 16 million members. This means that an average patient might have 800 matches, which bodes poorly for the marginal benefit of joining the list.
The probability of being an HLA match might be a lot lower than 1⁄20,000. Say that half the potential 16,000,000 donors would renege on donating if they were called, so we actually have 8,000,000 available members. A 1 in 20,000 chance implies that the chance that a given patient has no matches would be (1−1/20,000)8,000,000=2×10−174, when in reality the chance of having a match (probably with a donor who is willing to donate?) is at least 0.01. Maybe 1 in 2 million is more reasonable?
That probability is not 1, because they might have been saved by someone else instead, and you would want to adjust the cost-effectiveness based on this probability.
In many, many instances, a donation extends a life in expectation only a small amount vs. not receiving a donation. It isn’t “saving a life” in many cases with donation, and for many it’s a positive update for their condition, but not a “necessity”.
Yes, $1500 would be pretty competitive with GiveWell’s top charities, and possibly better.
A few comments:
Maybe some workplaces would consider giving you extra paid time off to do this. If not, you can use sick/personal days. If you’re earning to give or otherwise don’t do direct work, then the lost time might not be much of a loss at all.
Does the time estimate include recovery time in bed?
The estimate doesn’t really consider the counterfactual. You’d want to know the probability that the person you would have helped (or another person in their place) would have died had you not donated. That probability is not 1, because they might have been saved by someone else instead, and you would want to adjust the cost-effectiveness based on this probability. Maybe another way of putting it is this: what percentage of people who sign up for this actually end up donating? This won’t give you the right probability I mentioned just before, but it will tell you something about it: if almost everyone who signs up ends up donating, then the probability that an extra person gets a donation if you donate is also close to 1.
For the time estimate question, this video seems to be saying that donation takes 3-4 hours and recovery is maybe 1 hour. The website gives more information:
The counterfactual comparison is a good point. I couldn’t find any information about it on the website, but Wikipedia reports:
Wikipedia also reports that the Be the Match registry has about 16 million members. This means that an average patient might have 800 matches, which bodes poorly for the marginal benefit of joining the list.
The probability of being an HLA match might be a lot lower than 1⁄20,000. Say that half the potential 16,000,000 donors would renege on donating if they were called, so we actually have 8,000,000 available members. A 1 in 20,000 chance implies that the chance that a given patient has no matches would be (1−1/20,000)8,000,000=2×10−174, when in reality the chance of having a match (probably with a donor who is willing to donate?) is at least 0.01. Maybe 1 in 2 million is more reasonable?
In many, many instances, a donation extends a life in expectation only a small amount vs. not receiving a donation. It isn’t “saving a life” in many cases with donation, and for many it’s a positive update for their condition, but not a “necessity”.