Posted by Eugene Volokh:
"[Carnegie Mellon University Computer] Algorithm Enables Chain of 10 Kidney
Transplants":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_15-2009_03_21.shtml#1237417169
My friend Haym Hirsh (a computer science professor and a CMU graduate)
writes:
Person A needs a new kidney. His relative B is willing to give one
up for A, but B is not a good tissue match. Person C needs a new
kidney. His relative D is similarly willing to give one up for C,
but D is not a good tissue match.
But what if B is a good match for C and D is a good match for A?
�Swapping� donors in this fashion is called a paired swap.
But now what if there were still no matches, and there are two more
people E and F and the tissue matches are such that, collectively,
everyone who wants to donate a kidney does so, and everyone who
wants to get one does so.
And now what if it takes a 10-way swap to make this happen? It�s
previously been too difficult to scale things up much beyond paired
swap given the many many people in the national registries for
kidney transplants. Computing has just come to the rescue �
computer scientists at CMU have managed to make this happen, as
reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. See
[1]http://www.csdhead.cs.cmu.edu/blog/2009/03/17/cmu-algorithm-enab
les-chain-of-10-kidney-transplants/ for an overview.
Of course, I think that a [2]very old technology is ultimately the
most effective way of solving these problems, but so long as we insist
on refusing to use that, I applaud other temporary alternatives.
References
1.
http://www.csdhead.cs.cmu.edu/blog/2009/03/17/cmu-algorithm-enables-chain-of-10-kidney-transplants/
2. http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1162429015.shtml
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