Just a few days ago, I wrote about the viability and desirability of the market for organs. Then, this little piece comes out in the New York Times. This is awful, truly the worst of all scenarios, where individual rights are being violated and procedures are done hastily and with poor medical supervision. Here’s a sampling of how this market works:
Two weeks ago, he was approached by a bearded man as he waited at the early-morning labor market by the Old Delhi train station, he said. The man offered him an unusually generous deal: one and a half months’ work painting, for a little less than $4 a day, with free food and lodging.
Mr. Mohammed said he was driven four or five hours, to a secluded bungalow, where he was placed in a room with four other young men, under the watch of two armed guards.
“When I asked why I had been locked inside, the guards slapped me and said they would shoot me if I asked any more questions,” Mr. Mohammed said, lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in an orange blanket, clenching his teeth and shutting his eyes in pain. He said the men were given food to cook and periodically nurses would take blood samples.
One by one, he said, they were taken away for operations.
“They told us not to speak to each other or we would pay with our lives,” he said. “I was the last one to be taken.”
Unbelievably to some, this vignette argues to me the need for clear regulation enabling the sale and purchase of organs, or kidneys at least. This situation reminds me a good deal of the market for prostitution, which I have also written about. In both markets, the evidence of a poorly organized market, including forced sale of goods and services and frequent rule by violence, is used to suggest that the market should be made entirely illegal– i.e., we should never be allowed to sell organs or to sell our bodies for sex.
To me, one can interpret this evidence as arguing for the other extreme, that we should have fully legalized markets for the sale of organs and the sale of sex. I am not sure this is the right solution either, but this story in India, I think, is the worst of all possible scenarios. And there other potential bad outcomes: see CATO’s thoughts here, on some other organ donation misdeeds. While they may be stepping over the line by calling an opt-out program for organ donation (rather than the current opt-in program) a “Federal organ grab,” I come back to the fundamental question that I began with. If current markets for organ donation are not working, which they clearly are not, why not give a market-based solution a shot?
Posted by econophile 
