Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market

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Georgetown University Press, 2005 M03 19 - 280 pages

If most Americans accept the notion that the market is the most efficient means to distribute resources, why should body parts be excluded?

Each year thousands of people die waiting for organ transplants. Many of these deaths could have been prevented were it not for the almost universal moral hand-wringing over the concept of selling human organs. Kidney for Sale by Owner, now with a new preface, boldly deconstructs the roadblocks that are standing in the way of restoring health to thousands of people. Author and bioethicist Mark Cherry reasserts the case that health care could be improved and lives saved by introducing a regulated transplant organs market rather than by well-meant, but misguided, prohibitions.

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Contents

COMMUNITY ALTRUISM AND FREE CHOICE
99
SCIENTIFIC EXCELLENCE AND THE MARKETPLACE
102
THE VIRTUES AND VICES OF FREE CHOICE
107
SUMMARY
110
The Body Its Parts and the Market Revisionist Interpretations from the History of Philosophy
113
MAJOR THEORIES
118
SUMMARY
144
Prohibition More Harm Than Benefit?
147

ADJUDICATION AMONG MORAL INTUITIONS
36
GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE POLICY AND PRIVATE CHOICES
42
SUMMARY
68
Costs and Benefits Vices and Virtues
72
HEALTH CARE COSTS AND BENEFITS
74
EQUALITY AND LIBERTY
83
ORGAN MARKETS VERSUS OTHER PROCUREMENT AND ALLOCATION STRATEGIES
88
FALSE CLAIMS TO MORAL CONSENSUS
148
CRAFTING HEALTH CARE POLICY AMID MORAL PLURALISM
154
Sample of International Legislation Restricting the Sale of Human Organs for Transplantation
163
List of Cases
169
Notes
171
Index
245
Copyright

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Page 189 - THERE is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of . property ; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world} in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.
Page 128 - To UNDERSTAND political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.
Page 106 - One who sells any product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused to the ultimate user or consumer; or to his property...
Page 22 - I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places...
Page 24 - Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
Page 128 - The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that are not of it.
Page 202 - After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
Page 24 - [e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.

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About the author (2005)

Mark J. Cherry is the Dr. Patricia A. Hayes Professor in Applied Ethics and professor of philosophy at St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas. He is editor of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, associate senior editor of Christian Bioethics, and editor-in-chief of HealthCare Ethics Committee Forum. He is coeditor of the book series The Annals of Bioethics and editor of the book series Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture.

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