As technology changes, the law is always slow to adapt, but adapt it must if we are to increase the vital pool of bone marrow donors in this country.

The problem is painfully clear for 13-year-old Jordan Flynn of Lewiston and her family. Jordan is scheduled for a transplant in late April at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

The transplant will extend Jordan’s life for a number of years, but it will not cure her underlying condition, Fanconi anemia, a rare blood disorder that destroys bone marrow and makes its victims extremely susceptible to cancer and genetic blood disorders.

The challenges facing the family were described in a Sun Journal story Sunday. Of the family’s five children, three have the fatal disorder, Jordan and her twin seven-year-old sisters, Julia and Jorja.

In a transplant, stem cells are removed from one person and infused into another, after the recipient’s cells have been killed by drugs or radiation.

When a recipient and donor are a good genetic match, the cells move into the bone marrow of the recipient and begin producing healthy blood cells.

The procedure is used to treat leukemia and several other blood disorders.

Matching donors and recipients is very difficult. So the larger the pool of potential donors, the better the chance of finding a good match.

The family recently won a lawsuit against the federal government which prohibits donors from receiving compensation.

The U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to reconsider its decision, but the court refused, giving the Justice Department 90 days to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The intent of the federal law is noble, to prevent desperate people from selling organs for transplantation.

The goal is to prevent the sort of market for organs that has sprung up in China. A recent news story said five people had been arrested in Chenzhou for allowing a 17-year-old boy to sell a kidney to buy an iPad and iPhone.

But we see a clear distinction between selling organs, which cannot be replaced, and selling a renewable substance such as blood stem cells.

Traditionally, doctors have had to stick a needle into a donor’s hip bone to remove marrow, a sometimes painful and risky procedure.

But a new method, peripheral blood stem cell donation, is nonsurgical plus less painful and risky. Blood is simply removed through a needle in one arm, processed by machine, then replaced. Then it is infused into the recipient.

Clearly, the new procedure is now more similar to platelet donation, for which compensation is allowed.

While making donations entirely out of a desire to save lives remains a wonderful humanitarian gesture, paying compensation would unarguably increase the available pool of donors.

That is crucial right now for thousands of people, including the Flynn family. But any one of us, or our loved ones, might some day need the same life-saving procedure.

The Justice Department should accept the lower court ruling: The time has come to allow compensation for this procedure.

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The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and the editorial board.