Julian Koplin, drawing extensively on empirical data, has argued that vendors, even in well-regulated kidney markets, are likely to be significantly harmed. I contend that his reasoning to this conclusion is dangerously mistaken. I highlight two failures. First, Koplin is insufficiently attentive to the differences between existing markets and the regulated markets proposed by advocates. On the basis of this error, he wrongly concludes that many harms will persist even in a well-regulated system. Second, Koplin misunderstands the utilitarian assessment of (...) the market. He focuses on the costs and benefits of the transaction for the vendor. But, the relevant comparison is between an individual’s welfare across different courses of action, namely, vending and the nonvending alternative. Although Koplin’s empirically informed contribution is a welcome addition to this literature, the mistakes that pervade his interpretation of the data demand correction. (shrink)

One common objection to establishing regulated live donor organ markets is that such markets would be exploitative. Perhaps surprisingly, exploitation arguments against organ markets have been widely rejected in the philosophical literature on the subject. It is often argued that concerns about exploitation should be addressed by increasing the price paid to organ sellers, not by banning the trade outright. I argue that this analysis rests on a particular conception of exploitation, and outline two additional ways that the charge of (...) exploitation can be understood. I argue that while increasing payments to organ sellers may mitigate or eliminate fair benefits exploitation, such measures will not necessarily address fair process exploitation or complicity in injustice. I further argue that each of these three forms of wrongdoing is relevant to the ethics of paid living organ donation, as well as the design of public policy more generally. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical evidence in medicine, economics, law, and anthropology, I argue that a market is uniquely capable of meeting the demand for transplantable kidneys, and that it may be arranged so as to operate safely. The welfare gains, expected to accrue to both vendors and recipients, are sufficient to justify sales. Having spelled out the considerations recommending a kidney market, I address the most forceful objections facing the proposal. Despite its currency, the claim that incentives will crowd out altruistic (...) donors and result in a decrease in supply is empirically unsupported and predicated on an implausible view of donorsâ motives. A host of objections claim vendorsâ will not give informed consent. Many such objections identify easily remediable problems, or impose unreasonable standards â standards that would rule out morally permissible kidney donation. And all presuppose a model of morally transformative consent that, I argue, is deficient. Two further challenges point to harms inflicted on those who do not participate in the market. Some claim that those in poverty will be subject to harmful social and legal pressure to vend. This objection fails to distinguish between being pressured to perform a specific act, and being under general economic pressure and having the option to perform an act. It, moreover, presupposes vending more common than is possible. Others worry that the market will give rise to unfair pecuniary externalities. This objection also presupposes that kidney sales will occur more often than is possible. But more importantly, the normative consideration that is supposed to make such externalities especially objectionable, in fact, recommends allowing sales. I also make a political case for kidney sales. I offer an account of the stateâs proper role in the market. I begin with a conception of democratic equality according to which the state is responsible to secure for its citizens the preconditions for democratic participation. I then show that this end would be promoted were the state to end the current prohibition on sales. (shrink)

Background Advocates for a regulated system to facilitate kidney donation between unrelated donor-recipient pairs argue that monetary compensation encourages people to donate vital organs that save the lives of patients with end-stage organ failure. Scholars support compensating donors as a form of reciprocity. This study aims to assess the compensation system for the unrelated kidney donation program in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a particular focus on the implications of Islam on organ donation and organ sales. Methods This study (...) reviews secondary documents for philosophical argumentation and ethical analysis of human organ donation and sale for transplantation. Results and discussion According to Islamic law, organ donation is an act of _sadaqatul jariyah,_ and individuals are permitted to donate organs with the intention of saving lives. The commercialization of humans as organ sellers and buyers is contrary to the Islamic legal maxim _eethaar_, undermining donors of ‘selfless’ or ‘altruistic’ motivations. Such an act should be considered immoral, and the practice should not be introduced into other countries for the sake of protecting human dignity, integrity, solidarity, and respect. I, therefore, argue that Iran’s unrelated kidney donation program not only disregards the position of the Islamic religion with respect to the provision or receipt of monetary benefits for human kidneys for transplantation but that it also misinterprets the Islamic legal proscription of the sale of human organs. I also argue that the implementation of Iran’s unrelated kidney donor transplantation program is unethical and immoral in that potential donors and recipients engage in a bargaining process akin to that which sellers and buyers regularly face in regulated commodity exchange markets. Conversely, I suggest that a modest fixed monetary remuneration as a gift be provided to a donor as a reward for their altruistic organ donation, which is permissible by Islamic scholars. This may remove the need to bargain for increased or decreased values of payment in exchange for the organ, as well as the transactional nature of ‘buyer and seller’, ensuring the philosophy of ‘donor and recipient’ is maintained. Conclusions Offering a fixed modest monetary incentive to organ donors would serve to increase organ supply while protecting donors’ health and reducing human suffering without legalizing the human organ trade. (shrink)

Effective altruism is a growing philosophical and social movement, whose members design their lives in ways aligned with doing the most good that they can do. The main focus of this paper is to explore what effective altruism has to say about the moral obligations people have to do good with their organs, in the face of an organ-shortage problem. It is argued that an effective altruism framework offers a number of valuable theoretical and practical insights relevant to ongoing debate (...) about how to resolve the organ-shortage problem. Its recommendations constitute a plausible and promising strategy for increasing the supply of, and decreasing the demand for, human organs, in a way that protects the global poor. And, many of its recommendations can be implemented into policy without requiring that citizens actually become effective altruists themselves. (shrink)

Worldwide 1.2 million people are dying from kidney failure each year, and in the USA alone, approximately 100 000 people are currently on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. One possible solution to the kidney shortage is for governments to pay donors for one of their healthy kidneys and distribute these kidneys according to need. There are, however, compelling objections to this government-monopsony model. To avoid these objections, I propose a small adjustment to the model. I suggest we reward (...) kidney sellers with both money and a ceremony that celebrates their noble act. They should, in other words, receive a prize rather than a price. (shrink)

Due to the shortage of organs, it has been proposed that the ban on organ sales is lifted and a market-based procurement system introduced. This paper assesses four prominent proposals for how such a market could be arranged: unregulated current market, regulated current market, payment-for-consent futures market, and the family-reward futures market. These are assessed in terms of how applicable prominent concerns with organ sales are for each model. The concerns evaluated are that organ markets will crowd out altruistic donation, (...) that consent to sell organs is invalid, that sellers will be harmed, and that commodification of organs will affect human relationships in a negative way. The paper concludes that the family-reward futures market fares best in this comparison but also that it provides the weakest incentive to potential buyers. There is an inverse relationship between how applicable prominent critiques are to organ market models and the increase in available organs they can be expected to provide. (shrink)

Janet Radcliffe Richards’ The Ethics of Transplants outlines a novel framework for moral inquiry in practical contexts and applies it to the topic of paid living kidney donation. In doing so, Radcliffe Richards makes two key claims: that opponents of organ markets bear the burden of proof, and that this burden has not yet been satisfied. This paper raises four related objections to Radcliffe Richards’ methodological framework, focusing largely on how Radcliffe Richards uses this framework in her discussion of kidney (...) sales. We conclude that Radcliffe Richards’ method of inquiry hinders our ability to answer the very question that it ought to help us resolve: What is there best reason to do, all things considered? (shrink)

In their recent paper in this journal, Zümrüt Alpinar-Şencan and colleagues review existing dignity-based objections to organ markets and outline a new form of dignity-based objection they believe has more merit: one grounded in a social account of dignity. This commentary clarifies some aspects of the social account of dignity and then shows how this revised account can be applied to other perennial issues in bioethics, including the ethics of human embryo research and the ethics of creating part-human chimeras.

An increasingly common objection to kidney sales holds that the introduction of monetary incentives may undermine potential donors’ altruism, discourage donation, and possibly result in a net reduction in the supply of kidneys. To explain why incentives might be counterproductive in this way market opponents marshal evidence from behavioral economics. In particular, they claim that the context of kidney sales is ripe for motivational crowding. This reasoning, if sound, would have a profound influence on the debate over kidney sales. What’s (...) perhaps the principal reason to favor a market – the increase in supply it would bring – would be called into doubt. However, on inspection it becomes apparent that the evidence touted by market opponents not only lends no credence to their claims, but also provides some positive reason to doubt them. The near-ubiquitous references to motivational crowding in the literature on kidney sales are fundamentally misplaced. (shrink)

In The Gift Relationship, Richard Titmuss argued that the practice of altruistic blood donation fosters social solidarity while markets in blood erode it. This paper considers the implications of this line of argument for the organ market debate. I defend Titmuss’ arguments against a number of criticisms and respond to claims that Titmuss’ work is not relevant to the context of live donor organ transplantation. I conclude that Titmuss’ arguments are more resilient than many advocates of organ markets suggest, and (...) more relevant to the debate than is commonly appreciated. (shrink)

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the (...) market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests. (shrink)

Luke Semrau argues that the documented harms of existing organ markets do not undermine the case for establishing regulated systems of paid kidney donation. He offers two arguments in support of this conclusion. First, Semrau argues that the harms of kidney selling are straightforwardly amenable to regulatory solution. Second, Semrau argues that even in existing black markets, sellers would likely have experienced greater harm if the option of selling a kidney were not available. This commentary challenges both of Semrau’s claims. (...) I argue that there is no reason to believe that kidney sellers benefit from the current black market trade in organs, and highlight a number of potential issues regarding the effectiveness and feasibility of Semrau’s proposed market regulations. (shrink)

How do we know that particular answers in bioethical controversies are true, or are at least getting closer to the truth? We gain insight into this question by applying Alasdair MacIntyre’s work on the nature of rationality, rational justification, and tradition. Using MacIntyre’s work and the papers in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, I propose a framework for members of particular traditions to judge whether they themselves or other traditions are getting closer to or further away (...) from the truth in particular bioethical questions. Members of different traditions—be it Confucian, Aristotelian, politically liberal, utilitarian, or something else—should look at how they and their theoretical rivals look at empirical data to address bioethical questions, the moral judgments they make, and the laws and regulations they support. Some level of agreement on these issues need not require individual traditions to eschew their foundational premises or values; recognizing the reality of moral pluralism and disagreement should not prevent us from seeing this. Neither, as MacIntyre argues, should pluralism and disagreement obscure that a necessary condition for successful rational exchange and adjudication between competing traditions is granting authority to certain norms and virtues. (shrink)

An innovative program recently initiated at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center allows people to donate a kidney in exchange for a voucher that a loved one can redeem for a kidney if and when needed. As a relatively new practice, the ethical implications of advanced kidney donation have not yet been widely discussed. This paper reflects on some of the bioethical issues at stake in this new donation program, as well as some broader philosophical issues related to (...) the meaning and moral salience of commodification. I first consider whether the literature on commercial markets in organs––a longstanding topic of bioethical debate––can meaningfully inform ethical analysis of kidney voucher programs. Specifically, I consider whether and to what extent common objections to the exchange of kidneys for cash also apply to the exchange of kidneys for “kidney vouchers.” Second, I argue that the contrast between the ethical issues raised by these two practices highlights the need to understand commodification as existing on a continuum, with different degrees of commodification giving rise to different ethical issues. Doing so can help sharpen our understanding of commodification as a moral concept, as well as its relevance to broader debates about the moral limits of markets. (shrink)

The idea of paying donors in order to make more human bodily material available for therapy, assisted reproduction, and biomedical research is notoriously controversial. However, while national and international donation policies largely oppose financial incentives they do not treat all parts of the body equally: incentives are allowed in connection to the provision of some parts but not others. Taking off from this observation, I discuss whether body parts differ as regards the ethical legitimacy of incentives and, if so, why. (...) I distinguish two approaches to this issue. On a ”principled” approach, some but not all body parts are inherently special in a way that proscribes payment. On a ”pragmatic” approach, the appropriateness of payment in relation to a specific part must be determined through an overall assessment of e.g. the implications of payment for the health and welfare of providers, recipients, and third parties, and the quality of providers’ consent. I argue that the first approach raises deep and potentially divisive questions about the good life, whereas the second approach invokes currently unsupported empirical assumptions and requires difficult balancing between different values and the interests of different people. This does not mean that any attempt to distinguish between body parts in regard to the appropriateness of payment necessarily fails. However, I conclude, any plausible such attempt should either articulate and defend a specific view of the good life, or gather relevant empirical evidence and apply defensible principles for weighing goods and interests. (shrink)

The target article challenges the increasingly popular portrayal of living kidney sale as potentially a mutually beneficial arrangement, capable not only of saving or improving the lives of patients in need of transplants but also of significantly benefiting poor vendors. Carefully reviewing the literature on harms to vendors in illegal kidney markets and in Iran’s legal market, Koplin argues that many of these harms would persist in the sort of legal regulated system that kidney sale advocates envision. This is an (...) important argument. The kidney sales debate has been skewed in favor of permitting sales by a simplified view of the potential harms involved and excessive optimism about the capacity of regulation to prevent these harms. The article counterbalances these tendencies and thus considerably weakens the case for allowing sales. Nonetheless, some market proponents might remain unconvinced. I shall suggest that in addition to the lessons that Koplin draws from existing kidney markets, there is yet another one, which casts further doubt on the advisability of allowing kidney sales. (shrink)

An important argument against prohibiting organ sales is that it removes the best option available to individuals in dire circumstances. However, this line of reasoning fails to recognise that selling a kidney on a regulated market is only the best option in a very narrow comparison, where a regulated organ market is compared with banning organ sales. Once we acknowledge this narrowness, selling a kidney is not the best option. This paves the way for a distributive justice-based critique of the (...) ‘best option’ argument for organ markets, which illuminates that organ markets should be compared with a broader set of alternatives. If providing the option of selling a kidney is not the best option, but rather the best option we are willing to provide, and one which means that many people will remain in poverty and unjust circumstances, then this reflects poorly on those societies willing to offer only this option and not a better one. (shrink)