Marketing Body Parts: Morality, Law, and Public Opinion

Abstract

This article offers an economic (market-based) argument for prohibiting not only transplant commercialism (trafficking and tourism) but also donation of quasi-replaceable body parts (such as first kidney) that require the mutilation of a living human body (turning a part of a person that does not regenerate into a thing to be implanted in another). The argument relies on the concept of pollution (negative effects of a market that fall on participants without their informed consent). The article includes a critique of part of the Declaration of Istanbul.