Links - Getting Past The Ick Factor

That you find it gross is no argument for an adult to make.

Quick, name something Iran does better than basically any other country including the U.S. . . .

If you said Ghormeh Sabzi, well, okay . . . name another thing Iran does better.

You should now say kidney donation.

“How can that be?” you ask. Simple, they allow markets to work in kidney transactions including paying donors money.

“Ick!” you say, “I could never be okay with that.” Well, progress depends on getting past ick in general, and a solution to the incredible kidney shortage does so specifically.

Let me ask you another question: Did you know that America’s 9th largest goods export is blood-related products? No, it’s not fake blood for international Halloween costumes. It’s the real thing and its byproducts.

Find that icky? Well the French do too, but only to their detriment and hypocrisy as Scott Sumner relates in reference to an article in The Economist.

The French government has taken a principled stand against the European blood industry:

In June the European Parliament approved new regulations that allow compensation to be offered for donations, but ban it from being mentioned in advertising and cap payments to an amount proportionate to the value of time spent donating. Whereas Americans can donate 104 times a year, many Europeans are limited to less than 30 times. . . . France lobbied against the European Union’s recent regulatory changes, arguing that they risked making the human body a commodity, as is “already a reality in the United States”.

Instead, they prefer to finance the American blood industry:

At the same time, the French government is the sole shareholder in a company that owns six plasma centres in America, which pay donors, with the fluid collected available for use in France.

If more blood were available, many lives could be saved.

A lot of human development is about getting past the ick factor. This is obviously true for growth from childhood to adulthood, but it is also true for society at large.

Being able to first tolerate and then embrace ideas around invasive surgery was instrumental in the development of modern medicine. "Cut open the body to heal it?!? You're mad!"

The same can be said about economic development. "Sell body parts?!? Are you mad? Are you evil?"

"No, I'm rational and able to see past counter-intuitive truisms to get at true compassion and help."

As Sumner mentions in the post, this is true of kidneys too. Don Boudreaux expands upon this subject while considering the pathetic state of the world,

The case for freeing the market in transplantable kidneys is strong, both economically and ethically. Thousands of lives would be saved every year and thousands more delivered from the misery and indignity of dialysis. The downside is almost nonexistent.

Nevertheless, most people steadfastly refuse even to consider supporting a policy of allowing any living individual to be paid a market price in exchange for one of his or her kidneys. Many of the arguments against a free market in kidneys spring exclusively from people’s aesthetic revulsion at the thought of commerce in kidneys. This revulsion is curious, given that it’s surely more revolting to allow people to die unnecessarily simply in order to protect other people’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Boudreaux then considers second-best solutions to the problem: considering organs as a part of one’s estate (a property right of one’s heirs) and allowing people to contract with others the right to share one’s organs after their death.

These are good, but as labeled, only second best.

There are some policies and prohibitions that are so dumb, so obviously out bounds with regard to logic, ethics, and morality, that we can safely say no clear-thinking person should support them. The current regime that bans payment and thwarts markets for organ sharing is one such example.

When I think of modern-day practices that future generations will find abhorrent and unbelievable, organ sale transactions might just top the list.

For the sake of squeamish thinking we allow an ick factor to trump life.