New at Reason

December 29, 2006

Kerry Howley looks at the latest absurd ruling concerning selling, donating, or giving away body organs.

Comments

|12.29.06 @ 12:39PM|#

Interestingly, it's fine to specify that your body will be donated to a particular medical school for the purposes of anatomy class. If you can give the entire body to a specific school, why not give a particular organ to a specific sick person?

Apparently Iran has a market for kidneys that may be heavily regulated in absolute terms but is downright laissez-faire by comparison with the rest of the world.

|12.29.06 @ 12:39PM|#

FWIW, I told my wife to give me to a medical school if I go before her. Might as well do one final science lesson on my way out.

|12.29.06 @ 1:03PM|#

Thoreau,
I would stop short of assigning yourself as extra credit. Some of these kids are extremely motivated.

Guy Montag|12.29.06 @ 1:04PM|#

thoreau,

I wanted to give my now-ex-wife to a medical school, but I was stuck with her until the end of the divorce.

dhex|12.29.06 @ 1:32PM|#

you forgot to mention your blog, dude.

bill|12.29.06 @ 2:17PM|#

Strange how you can specify a recipient for a kidney if your alive bit not if your dead. If I wanted to give a kidney to my brother while we are both alive that's fine, but if I died and wanted him to get it, no way.

Larry A|12.29.06 @ 3:08PM|#

"The laws and regulations surrounding deceased organ donation, allocation and transplantation have purposefully established a legal infrastructure that excludes property law concepts....Instead, organs are donated for transplantation voluntarily (not sold or appropriated) and are regulated as a scarce national resource."

Of course if potential donors could count on getting even enough cash for a simple funeral donated organs wouldn't be scarce.

|12.29.06 @ 3:39PM|#

Of course if potential donors could count on getting even enough cash for a simple funeral donated organs wouldn't be scarce.

On top of that, if you gave away your entire body, It would save a lot of the money that you might have spent on the simple funeral.

Thomas Paine\'s Goiter|12.29.06 @ 4:50PM|#

Strange how you can specify a recipient for a kidney if your alive bit not if your dead.

Ms. Postrel knows this well.

|1.1.07 @ 8:27PM|#

Imagine if Mr. Lucia had been tested for organ compatibility before he died. Knowing that he wasn't a march with his friend, he'd keep both his kidneys. Upon his passing, the hospital asks his widow about organ donation. If she could have bargained a bit - "bump my friend Mr. Colavito up the kidney list and you can have everything that's useful from my husband's corpse" - two more people would have had new kidneys, and other patients might have benefited from whatever else the doctors could have salvaged.

Organizations like UNOS and NYODN ought to be maximizing incentives to donate. With proper safeguards, I don't see why selling the organs couldn't be allowed. Insurance companies could provide burial coverage that's contingent on "donation," with trusted groups providing counseling and acting as watchdogs against any abuse.

We already have "medical tourists" going abroad to places like India to get transplants without waiting. Those of us who distrust government health care point at such "voting with one's feet" as evidence that our medical system is superior to that of other countries. What does the flight of sick Americans to other lands to get care say about our system?

Kevin