Kidney For Sale: Ethicist Says, Ok Why Not

Look, if Georgetown University Press really wants us to blog this book, we will. Mark Cherry has written it and it is a bold title to say the least: Kidney for Sale by Owner.

  (WASHINGTON) — More than 4,600 Americans die each year while waiting for organ transplants. In 2003, only 20,000 of 83,000 patients waiting for organs in the United States received them. Despite widespread consensus that organ shortage is a national tragedy, bold initiatives to address the problem—such as creating a fee-based and regulated market for organ transplantation—have been fiercely rejected by the federal government, the medical community, and many religious faithful. But why? If most Americans accept the notion that the market is the most efficient means to distribute resources, why should body parts be exempt? 

  In Kidney for Sale by Owner, bioethicist Mark Cherry contends that the market is a legitimate means to procure and distribute human organs. Cherry carefully examines arguments against a market for body parts, made by such figures as John Locke and Immanuel Kant and Thomas Aquinas, and shows these claims to be steeped in myth, oversimplification, and bad logic. He contends that equality, liberty, altruism, social solidarity, human dignity, and, ultimately, improved health care are more successfully supported by an organ market rather than through its prohibition.

  Rather than focus on the purported human exploitation and "moral repugnance" of selling organs, Cherry says we should focus on saving lives. Many deaths could have been prevented, and many more lives saved, were it not for the moral hand-wringing over the concept of selling human organs. Cherry boldly deconstructs the roadblocks that are standing in the way of restoring health to thousands of people.

  "Mark Cherry's book is the definitive treatment of the bioethical and business ethics questions that have been raised about a market in organs,” says Nicholas Capaldi, Legendre-Soule Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics at Loyola University. “It is must reading for anyone interested in these issues, and it will be the basis for all future discussion of this topic."

  Mark J. Cherry is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Saint Edward's University in Austin, Texas; and is coeditor with H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., of Allocating Scarce Medical Resources, senior associate editor of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, senior associate editor of Christian Bioethics, and editor-in-chief of HealthCare Ethics Committee Forum (HEC Forum).

Also due out - we found out from our comments - is James Stacey Taylor's treatment of the same problem, Stakes and Kidneys: Why markets in human body parts are morally imperative. His book garnered pretty amazing reviews too:

'James Stacey Taylor has written the most comprehensive treatment of the problem of markets in kidneys. It is probably also the best treatment of the subject. His arguments that a legal trade in human organs would best solve the organ shortage are more sophisticated and compelling than any I have seen.'
Tom L. Beauchamp, Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar, Georgetown University, Washington DC

Dave Undis of lifesharers reports some donation statistics today:

The number of organ transplants in the United States increased 6% in 2004. That's over 27,000 lives saved. Organs from deceased donors were up 11%, and organs from live donors were up 2%. That's the good news.

Here's the bad news:
- Last year 43,128 people were added to the national transplant waiting list.
- Last year 6,228 people were removed from the waiting list because they had died. Another 1,594 were removed from the list because they had become too sick to undergo transplant surgery.
- At the end of 2004, over 87,300 people were on the national transplant waiting list. That's up from abou 83,900 at the end of 2003.

- updated 4/2/5