Russ's next book?

Can I use your letter in my principles class this summer?

Don

People would much rather the outcome be determined by something other than one's wealth when it comes to health care, and especially so when it is a life or death matter.

I don't think people really are against the idea that someone is making money off of the transaction, although that might be a factor for some for those who are against profit.

Whatever market evolved, it would be driven by the medical community and would probably be pretty stable. The advantage of wealth would be the ability to bribe the market maker (doctor), not the seller.

If markets for organs existed, Crosby (and Jobs, etc.) would get theirs, but so would lots of others. The notion that allowing price to allocate resources will leave only the rich consuming high quality goods is folly of the first order.

A market for organs will INCREASE the quantity supplied Stephen; this is the law of supply.

He was utterly horrified, and described the idea as "the cult of the individual gone mad" or similar. His concern was that if poor people could make money by disassembling their healthy bodies, other people would exploit them. Society would be dehumanized. He felt that the medical profession has a strong ethical obligation to protect the world from this kind of rapacious exploitation.

The trouble is, so long as we are thus protected, more people die through lack of organs.

People already sell their blood. It seems a small step to allow the occasional kidney. But should a financially desperate person be allowed to blind himself by selling both corneas? Note that he will then become a burden upon the State.

Ain't that the truth!

It's just like blood, everybody profits off it except the person who donates it.

There's a shortage of blood? Let people sell their own damn blood!

Hello? This isn't rocket science.

Granted – that's not a reason not to make a market for it – you would just want to regulate it. Perhaps only allow organ purchase from licensed, carefully watched harvesters who only collect organs from clearly willing participants.

I'm not sure what you mean by "high price", but there are currently black markets in organs and in these the prices are much higher than those that would prevail if black markets were made obsolete by legalizing organ sales. That is legalization would reduce the problem you are raising rather than increase it as you seem to be implying.

I'm not sure what you mean by "high price", but there are currently black markets in organs and in these the prices are much higher than those that would prevail if black markets were made obsolete by legalizing organ sales. That is legalization would reduce the problem you are raising rather than increase it as you seem to be implying.

aka Aldous Huxley?

Maybe the primary question here is when consent occurs. And then, there are the questions of whether the consent was voluntary …

Leave those to the legal scholars (or not), but if there's voluntary consent — from an AC viewpoint, I have no problem.

If people want to voluntarily calculate an expected value for the continuation of their life vs. the sale of a vital organ and its expected value to their family and heirs — allow them.

We should distinguish behaviors we find abhorrent and deviant from those we find simply foreign.

Jesus said that 'The poor will always be among us' — this wasn't a political or economic statement — it was simply an observation. It's politicians and economists that consistently promise remedies to this universal reality, and this reality apparently has little regard with how it's honestly measured. It doesn't matter how successful political programs are, because the bottom quintile of the past will always be replaced by the bottom quintile of the present or future. How convenient.

/End rant

Certainly there's a better solution.