The Market for Organs

China has one: Daniel Asa Rose, Larry's Kidney.

We need one: Sally Satel, ed. When Altruism Isn't Enough.

Background:

More than 1,000 Americans die every year awaiting a kidney transplant. Surgeons in the U.S. perform about 7,000 of the transplants annually, but that doesn't come close to meeting demand. As many as 250,000 patients require kidney dialysis — all of them subsidized by Medicare — but half of them are deemed not sick enough to warrant referral to a transplant program. The wait for a kidney transplant from a cadaver-donor can take seven years.

2 thoughts on “The Market for Organs”

  1. I would simply ask, whose kidney is it anyway? The hospital’s? The doctor’s? The government’s?

    Or (and here is a radical idea) the person in whose body it resides?

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