When you save the life of a kidney recipient in a rich country, you add a lot more to the global economy than when you save someone who would otherwise die of malaria in a poor country, even if the direct QALY impact is similar. There are also larger effects on scientific progress, geopolitics, etc.
In other contexts, e.g. in the Open Philanthropy Project’s assessment of cause areas, such non-QALY impacts (and the indirect effects of those over time) are considered to be of substantial importance beyond the direct QALYs.
I worry about selectively including or discounting non-QALY impacts from situation to situation (e.g. claiming a charity is n times better because it trades higher QALY benefits for lower non-QALY benefits, but when pressed agreeing that non-QALY effects are not negligible) in general, and in this specific case.
At least, the calculation should include both QALYs and monetary earnings of recipients.
Yes, although the monetary earnings of recipients could not be rated the same as if they were going to be donated to for example AMF because the value of funds donated to AMF is likely greater from an impartial point of view than if they went into a random individual’s pocket.
There is still low-hanging fruit in bringing gifted children online. A small percentage of kids in developing nations are potential high achievers, autodidacts and could be given access to all the world’s knowledge at reasonable costs.
If you think malaria nets aren’t leveraged enough to beat kidney donations, other interventions might be.
Legalizing voluntary organ markets could be most effective, since it would both make the poor richer and solve the kidney shortage. But perhaps politics is too hard to change.
When you save the life of a kidney recipient in a rich country, you add a lot more to the global economy than when you save someone who would otherwise die of malaria in a poor country, even if the direct QALY impact is similar. There are also larger effects on scientific progress, geopolitics, etc.
In other contexts, e.g. in the Open Philanthropy Project’s assessment of cause areas, such non-QALY impacts (and the indirect effects of those over time) are considered to be of substantial importance beyond the direct QALYs.
I worry about selectively including or discounting non-QALY impacts from situation to situation (e.g. claiming a charity is n times better because it trades higher QALY benefits for lower non-QALY benefits, but when pressed agreeing that non-QALY effects are not negligible) in general, and in this specific case.
At least, the calculation should include both QALYs and monetary earnings of recipients.
Yes, although the monetary earnings of recipients could not be rated the same as if they were going to be donated to for example AMF because the value of funds donated to AMF is likely greater from an impartial point of view than if they went into a random individual’s pocket.
There is still low-hanging fruit in bringing gifted children online. A small percentage of kids in developing nations are potential high achievers, autodidacts and could be given access to all the world’s knowledge at reasonable costs.
If you think malaria nets aren’t leveraged enough to beat kidney donations, other interventions might be.
Legalizing voluntary organ markets could be most effective, since it would both make the poor richer and solve the kidney shortage. But perhaps politics is too hard to change.