Would you give a penny to the needy? And a kidney? A heart? The thought of spring break conjures up images of warm-weather parties, drunken one-night stands, and ensuing hangovers; Yet for Rachel Garneau, a junior at Notre Dame, it represented a pseudo-holiday opportunity to give, and she did. This twenty-year-old donated a kidney for a complete stranger. There was an air of psychosis about her as she walked straight into the Bernard Mitchell Hospital at the University of Chicago, calm as always; his rather indifferent attitude, his rather disconcerting nonchalance. It’s funny how “weird” we find this act of total altruism; because it's weird, everything we know about evolution, Darwinism, basic human tendencies, and even the insightful field of behavioral economics contradicts what Rachel Garneau chose to do at 5:45 a.m. on a Tuesday: she gave until it hurt, and then some more. Economics, a field based on profit and gain, when taken in the context of human choices and decisions, leads to a deeper understanding of the motivation behind our actions. The basic theory underlying welfare economics is: “Assume that all individuals are selfish price takers. Then a competitive equilibrium is Pareto optimal (Feldman 1987, IV, 890).” The amalgamation of Adam Smith's life's work proved that humans are selfish and that ultimately we will succeed for our own gain. So how would he explain such an altruistic concept as altruism? How would he go about making sense of Rachel Garneau's actions? Amazingly, it is a culmination of pure science and economic theories that helps us unravel the mysteries of this very “divine” altruism. Modern cognitive neuroscience research has led to a new theory of altruism, Rachel Garneau has fostered a chain reaction of kidney donation. A family member who was considering donating but wasn't a match donated their kidney to someone else, and this channel has saved countless lives. The end justifying the means is not really valid here, since the “means” themselves are self-evident; we should see justification in the act itself. We are intrinsically programmed to do good, and perhaps the reason we do it is because it brings us happiness, perhaps we are, as Richard Dawkins says, a species composed of a " selfish gene”; but we are human, and if I had to choose between a person bringing no good to this world and a person fostering a cycle of good for both the subject and themselves, I would never even consider that a choice which deserves to be weighed. Give that penny, that kidney, or just show them some love. Give them a piece of your heart’.