1. None of the markets cited are for irreplaceable organs or irreversible donations. None except the surrogate pregnancy case are potentially life-threatening - or even inconveniencing.

2. I hope these brave libertarians don't expect me or other taxpayers to cover a lifetime of increased medical costs as a result of their private decision.

3. After observing the Ayn-Rand-young-turk contingent completely misread the nuances and horrific consequences of issues from legalized drugs and prostitution to "mercy" killing - why am I not convinced by their waaaay too facile reassurances this time around?

If you like slippery slopes, kiddies, go to a playground - and leave morality to the grownups.

Burge at his finest.

Good question by Burge.

It would take a lot, though I'm listed as an organ DONOR on my driver's license, and I respect people who donate.

Same

The government (aka taxpayers) should not be expected to protect you from yourself and the results of your bad decisions - even if you're desperate.

That said, however, when you have only one kidney, having sold the other, and you need dialysis, should you be able to come looking to the taxpayers to fund your care?

Likewise, a lifetime two-pack-a-day habit should not entitle you to the sympathetic ministrations of taxpayer-funded medical care. The warning's right there on the box.

At what point, however, do we draw that line? Is a person who goes skydiving once and has an accident to be scorned and left to his own devices vis-a-vis his medical care because he engaged in a dangerous frivolity? How about if the accident happens on his third or fourth jump? His twelfth?

Do we ban anything that might be considered dangerous or harmful? Do we wrap citizens in bubble wrap and spoon feed them pureed avocados for life? Or do we let people live life to the fullest and accept that we, as a society, might have to take care of some of the unlucky ones?

The other issue with an open market on organs is that "the list" today ensures everyone receives an organ in an order determined not by financial ability, but by need. An open market in organs puts the wealthiest patients at the front of the line. Remember the outcry when Mickey Mantle was being shuffled to the front of the line for a liver - only because he was Mickey Mantle?

If four thousand dollars is your only benefit...

How much crack or heroin will that buy? It's not reversible, not really.

There are ALREADY cases where for-profit donation has resulted in horror stories. ¡Repitan, por favor!

Here's a plain fact: the demand for women in the for-profit selling of sexual services means that Amy Alkon has a value to someone based only on what that someone can get for her.

Wanna talk to Pandora about this?

I hope these brave libertarians don't expect me or other taxpayers to cover a lifetime of increased medical costs as a result of their private decision.>>>>

That seems like an easy fix, given the will and permission to create a new insurance product. Part of the deal to sell the kidney would include a specific insurance supplement to cover complications.

I used to work at a clinical research organization. One year for some reason a rumor was going around that we were paying $3,000 for left testicles for a study we were conducting. We had inquiries from quite a few young men wanting to sell theirs.

Do we ban anything that might be considered dangerous or harmful?

Once we get full-scale socialized medicine, you better believe it! of course, you'll become a resource, not a citizen. And it may become your patriotic duty to die early, so that your organs can be given to better producers who have had bad luck.

If everything was truly voluntary, I might go for it. It is all to easy to imagine a hospital (or state bureaucrat) saying "You have no money for the treatment for XXX disease but if you donate your kidney, you can get it." Or a debt collector calling and saying "You can sell your kidney and then we will quit bothering you."

A market for legal parts sales? Not horrifying in the least, especially now that face transplants are working.

It should be noted that in the United States we already have robust markets for blood, semen, human eggs, and surrogate wombs. Extending markets to include non-vital solid organs such as kidneys and pieces of liver, which can be obtained with reasonable safety from living donors, is not such a stretch.
_____________________________________

Seems to me we need to create a category in addition to "vital" and "non-vital."

That is, for most healthy adults, donating blood is clearly no big deal, under the right regulations. But the reason we have two kidneys is in case one of them fails. So if you have only one left, you're in a precarious position.

From a columnist in the 1980s:

"You can sell your blood, but you can't sell your kidney. In fact, you can't even donate your kidney except under the most limited circum­stances, no matter how fiercely you believe that this is the way you were meant to serve your fellow man and no matter how healthy you are. The risk of coercion is simply too great, and your kidney just too irreplaceable."

Lenona, read about Postrel & Satel. VP proved it can be done, and done um, well. (I already used up the word "grace" today.)

> Or a debt collector calling
> and saying "You can sell your
> kidney and then we will quit
> bothering you."

Right, and that's the reason we don't want people to do it, right? People, especially impoverished ones and those unattractive to our increasingly challenging workplace, will always have more petty debts than spare kidneys.

That's also a favorite argument against reparations for slavery (in my thick folder of contenders): The machinery of exploitation which would form to harvest that money from those to whom it was mailed would be like no kind of organized crime this country has every seen. God knows what the vaporization of that wealth would mean to our economy, and God can't imagine what such a syndicate might select for its next project.

Also, I like to donate platelets. I don't know the typical volume of liquid, maybe a pint or two depending on the cell counts that day. For each donation, samples are sent overnight to Arizona (?) for testing. After that there are about five days before the goods are too spoiled to be of benefit to a cancer patient or burn victim. If I understand correctly, the vast majority of donations are eventually destroyed. And each collection kit of tubes and bags, usable precisely once, whether or not the donation is successful and whether or not the product is available when a patient needs it, costs about $150.

Interviewing / collection / testing / data management / handling / storage / delivery, all by trained and licensed personel... ... ....

It's fun to imagine that we can expect people to pay in some direct way for what they need. But that's not how Western medicine works, because that's not how Western Civ works.

I went looking for pictures of a donation kit. I found this view of a machine in a Naval base.

The only pic of a collection kit I could find was this one, from Alibaba.

I'm quite confident Alibaba is not the source for medical supplies of this type in the United States. We can all be glad, and think carefully about the prices we want to demand of, and pay for, modern medicine.

Yes, we need to compensate people. It would take $4,000 to make up for lost time and pain. I don’t consider that profit. If people paid, there would not be all that much risk for failure of the remaining kidney because kidney’s would be available.

I’d like to see people better compensated for donations. I’d like to see it truly worthwhile for the time, risk, and scar.

> I don’t consider
> that profit

To affirm that we each get to judge the boundaries of "profit" (or, ludicrously, that we would allow you to do so on our behalf) leaves the matter in a position that I promise you will not like.

My platelets? 20 cents per ounce.

Oh, you mean for *Jen*??

$9k/oz., cash on the barrelhead.

A world in which poor people are selling their organs for $4k sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

@NicoleK,

The dystopia is already here

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/broke-teen-who-sold-kidney-for-an-iphone-now-bedridden-for-life

So, there's the horror story - another one, that is.

"If people paid, there would not be all that much risk for failure of the remaining kidney because kidney’s (sic) would be available."

Sure, because somebody who SOLD A KIDNEY can afford somebody else's, with all the anti-rejection medications to follow.

Crid:
Lenona, read about Postrel & Satel. VP proved it can be done, and done um, well.
-------------------
This is like the ivy-leage college girls toying with legalized prostitution - it only "works well" for people of a certain class, with certain resources and clout.

That's wrong and its ludicrous. VP reached out to help someone she barely knew and did it gracefully.

Benny Dee, I never thought of you a SJW-style virtue-signaller. Haidt wrote a book about you.

"It would take a lot, though I'm listed as an organ DONOR on my driver's license,"

Your donor status on your license only matters when you're brought into the ER after an accident has left you effectively dead but for the machines artificially keeping your cardio-respiratory functions active to keep the kidney fresh until harvest. That's not quite the same as actively donating while healthy.

"it only "works well" for people of a certain class, with certain resources and clout."

That can be said for many things. like gambling (including in the casinos known as stock exchanges) - heck, most investment activities.

"A man's got to know his limitations" -Inspector Harry Calahan