harald

Karma: 127

harald 16 Sep 2020 9:44 UTC
4 points
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on: Systemic change, global poverty eradication, and a career plan rethink: am I right?
Thank you for writing up your notes and thoughts on this book! I hadn’t heard of it before, and have since read it. A lot to think about and research—I’d be interested in sharing notes and may write some posts looking into specific claims he made in the book.

harald 15 Jul 2020 9:13 UTC
2 points
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on: How to give as you earn in the UK? GAYE vs. GiftAid
Does the organisation you’re giving to allow you to set up a regular direct debit with Gift Aid? I’m pretty sure EA Funds does this, so anything you can donate to through there would be as easy administratively as doing the GAYE scheme, and I don’t think there’s any fee.
The real benefit from the GAYE scheme would come once you’re looking at claiming back tax for yourself (i.e. when you start paying more than Basic Rate tax). And even at this point there are other options. When I was giving fixed amounts on a monthly basis a few years ago, I used the live chat on HMRC’s Income Tax Page to notify HMRC about my regular donations, and they updated my tax code to take them into account. (my employer didn’t support Payroll Giving, otherwise I might have done that instead)

harald 30 Oct 2019 18:38 UTC
13 points
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in reply to: Hauke Hillebrandt’s comment on: Be the Match: a volunteer list for bone marrow donation
Worth noting (some of these are also mentioned in my other comment, with sources there):
1. If you’re male and 16-30 (a significant proportion of EAs), the chance of being asked to donate is more like 1 in 200.
2. I’d say the time cost of registering is closer to 15 minutes than an hour. Personally I filled in the form at work during my lunch break, and spent a few minutes doing the cheek swab at home.
3. It’s not clear that not doing a transplant would be cheaper for healthcare systems than doing the transplant. In general, complications for conditions which would require a transplant can be expensive to treat, and healthcare systems like the NHS would treat them. See the linked Guardian article in my other comment which suggests that transplants could actually be saving the NHS money vs treating the symptoms. Also see the other link that suggests UK transplants from UK donors are much cheaper than UK transplants from foreign donors (assuming these transplants would be happening anyway).
4. I do think health concerns to donors need to be taken into consideration. Most people (90%) can donate in a way similar to blood donation, but 10% undergo general anesthesia. This isn’t risk-free, though generally the criteria which filter for suitable donors upon registering exclude people who would be at high risk when undergoing general anesthesia.

harald 30 Oct 2019 18:24 UTC
35 points
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on: Be the Match: a volunteer list for bone marrow donation
Thanks for posting about this. I spent some time looking into bone marrow transplants a few years ago when a friend needed one.
I’m on the register, and I would donate if asked to. This is definitely at least partly driven by my personal experiences, but aside from that I suspect that for anyone who’s not self-employed or doing direct work (or studying) it probably makes sense to join the register from a cost-effectiveness point of view.
Some useful considerations, at least some of which haven’t already been mentioned by other commenters:
- If you’re male and 16-30 your chance of donating at some point is around 1 in 170.
- In general, around 90% of donations are done though peripheral blood stem cell collection—as per Jorgen_Ljones’ experience. This can take a few days to recover from, but isn’t too invasive. The other 10% is through direct bone marrow collection, and requires general anesthesia. I think the trade-offs are quite different here for people who are self-employed or doing direct impact vs those working in a non-EA job, or earning to give. Personally I’m on the register and expect that I would be able to get some paid time off from work if I were asked to donate.
- In general, information sharing between the registers in various countries (e.g. Be The Match in US, Anthony Nolan in UK) is pretty good, and they tend to operate with volunteers who can transport bone marrow across countries when required.
- Only 60% of transplant recipients receive bone marrow from someone who is a ‘perfect match’. Those other 40% lead a much higher risk of complications. So contributing to the register doesn’t just lead to more transplants, but also to better transplants.
- I don’t think the opportunity cost of signing up is an hour of productive time, at least in the UK. It’s a 10m online form, a cheek swab, and walking past a post box.
Other data points from various sources that would be useful for a cost-effectiveness estimate on this:
- “Using conservative assumptions, the cost per life-year gained compared with no transplantation was US $16,346 (95% CI $8695, $38,006) for BM/PBSC transplantation” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1524-4733.2007.00180.x/pdf
- “£37.7m was spent on donor provision facilitating over 1,300 transplants in the UK and abroad” https://www.anthonynolan.org/sites/default/files/AR_2017.pdf ⇒ It costs £29k/transplant (assuming ‘facilitating’ means total cost)
- In UK, cost is covered by NHS: https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/blood-and-infection-group-f/f01/#policies
- “The NHS England analysis suggests that funding second stem cell transplants could be cost-neutral. If patients do not receive transplants, they are given alternative treatments – further chemotherapy or palliative care – the costs of which are difficult to quantify as they are highly variable and depend on the patient’s circumstances. However, the policy working group of clinicians, commissioners, patients and stakeholder organisations, including Anthony Nolan, which advised NHS England on the decision, looked at examples of two patients who didn’t receive a second transplant. These patients were estimated to have incurred costs of about £130,000 over a one-year period.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/28/nhs-cancer-second-stem-cell-transplants-funding
- “Thus we estimate the cost of a single cord blood transplant to be around £98,200 per patient, with cost up to 100 days post-transplant in the order of £72,000.” … “The cost of a transplant, and of alternative treatment, will be the same as for a cord blood transplant;”—Strategic oversight committee, 2014 report: http://studyres.com/doc/16711905/unrelated-donor-stem-cell-transplantation-in-the-uk ⇒ £10.1k/QALY at 9.7QALYs per transplant
- The estimated cumulative survival at 1 and 10 years were… 47% and 17.7%, respectively, for BM/PBSC recipients. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1524-4733.2007.00180.x/pdf
- A recent study found that of patients who receive a second transplant, one in three achieved the five-year survival milestone. https://www.anthonynolan.org/news/2016/07/14/our-letter-following-nhs-england-announcement-funding-second-transplants (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26631751)
- “Each transplant will result in a benefit of 9.7 QALYs. This is derived from survival rates for unrelated donor stem cell transplants (BSBMT 5th report to Specialist Commissioners) using the methodology reported above;”—Strategic oversight committee, 2014 report, p89: http://studyres.com/doc/16711905/unrelated-donor-stem-cell-transplantation-in-the-uk
- “The use of UK-sourced stem cells saves the NHS money. UK-sourced adult and cord blood donations are priced at £13,950 and £14,500 respectively. Imported adult donations are typically around £25,0004 and cord blood donations around £30,000.”—strategic oversight committee, 2014 report
I’ve considered doing a cost-effectiveness estimate on this but haven’t made time for it for various reasons; please let me know if you’d be interested in seeing it written up or writing it up. I have more info I can share which was shared with me privately.
What links here?
- EA Forum Prize: Winners for October 2019 by Aaron Gertler (11 Dec 2019 10:37 UTC; 23 points)
- harald's comment on Be the Match: a volunteer list for bone marrow donation by Evan Rysdam (30 Oct 2019 18:38 UTC; 13 points)

harald 25 Mar 2018 17:22 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: JamesDrain’s comment on: Open Thread #39
Cool! Who would you say is the target audience for this? Is it suitable for people who are very new to EA?

harald 25 Mar 2018 17:20 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Venkatesh’s comment on: Open Thread #39
Have you had any updates on this? This topic came up at a recent meetup I was at; I’d be interested in reading/contributing.

harald 25 Mar 2018 17:18 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: iossc’s comment on: Open Thread #39
Worth keeping an eye on this for potentially relevant projects: http://www.eawork.club/

harald 25 Mar 2018 17:16 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: HenryStanley’s comment on: Open Thread #39
Do you know if anyone has done a more recent analysis of this kind of thing? He lists quite a few caveats/reservations at the end of this post.

harald 25 Mar 2018 17:13 UTC
2 points
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on: An easy way for charities to increase revenue: Add Apple Pay and Google Pay to donation checkout
Cool! Are there no extra charges associated with Google Pay or Apple Pay?