An article in the New England Journal of Medicine in January entitled ‘Selling Bone Marrow-Flynn v. Holder by Glen Cohen¹ reports on a disturbing development in the USA. Cohen reviews a recent judgment by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which held that a ban on selling ‘bone marrow,’ that is part of the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984,² does not encompass ‘peripheral blood stem cells’. The judgment, according to Cohen, is based on the statutory interpretation of NOTA, not on the plaintiff’s more radical claim that the prohibition on selling bone marrow violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.