Economics

Kidneys for Sale?

Aug 14, 2009 Peter Singer

The arrest in New York last month of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman whom police allege tried to broker a deal to buy a kidney, coincided with the passage of a law in Singapore that some say will open the way for organ trading there. Would legalizing the market for human body parts exploit the poor, or should the poor be free to choose?

PRINCETON – The arrest in New York last month of Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum, a Brooklyn businessman whom police allege tried to broker a deal to buy a kidney for $160,000, coincided with the passage of a law in Singapore that some say will open the way for organ trading there.

Last year, Singapore retail magnate Tang Wee Sung was sentenced to one day in jail for agreeing to buy a kidney illegally. He subsequently received a kidney from the body of an executed murderer – which, though legal, is arguably more ethically dubious than buying a kidney, since it creates an incentive for convicting and executing those accused of capital crimes.

Now Singapore has legalized payments to organ donors. Officially, these payments are only for reimbursement of costs; payment of an amount that is an “undue inducement” remains prohibited. But what constitutes an “undue inducement” is left vague.

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Peter Singer

Writing for PS since 2001
219 Commentaries

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, is Founder of the nonprofit organization The Life You Can Save. His books include Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics, The Ethics of What We Eat (with Jim Mason), Rethinking Life and Death, The Point of View of the Universe, co-authored with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, The Most Good You Can Do, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, One World Now, Ethics in the Real World, Why Vegan?, and Utilitarianism: A Very Short Introduction, also with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek. In April 2021, W.W. Norton published his new edition of Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. In 2013, he was named the world's third "most influential contemporary thinker" by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute.

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Andrés Vallejo Jan 21, 2013

In my country, Ecuador, a law was recently passed. I don't know how widespread is the scheme, but seems sensible enough to be adopted everywhere. When whoever dies, he or she is a donor by default. If you have an issue with donating, you may and need to make an explicit statement saying so. Otherwise your organs can and will be used when you die. Since few people bother in making such as statement, the scheme presumably should increase the availability of organs for transplant.
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