I am watching an episode of the show “Bones” where a girl is sick because of a bad bone graft in her leg. If you have Netflix it’s Season 1 episode 20 “The Graft in the Girl”, that is if you’re interested in all of the details. It turns out that someone has been “illegally” selling bones or bone grafts. At one point the person that they find was involved in the black market is called “insane”. Why is she insane? Well because they are either selling something illegally or because the person had the audacity to fancy themselves capable of doing this (because they don’t have a Ph.D.). Anyways, it turns out that one of the donors had bad bones and caused a lot of people to be sick. What are some arguments you could think of that would refute the common reaction to this, i.e. horror that someone would “illegally” sell bone grafts? Also, how would a free market work so as to prevent people from selling harmful bone grafts?
I have a few thoughts on this. First, bone grafts help a lot of people. More supply=cheaper bone grafts=cheaper medical costs. I also wonder how many potential bone “supplies” would be actually harmful to a recipient compared to how many would be harmless in terms of causing cancer or illness.
Yes, it’s terrible that someone is trying to help people out more efficiently and cheaper than the “legal” way.
Of course, since they are made illegal, the whole operation is clouded by the threat of being shut down. They don’t have an easy access to medical checks to recognize the wrong donors - and their patents can’t rely on a good contract or reputation because the whole thing must be shady.
You can also use the example of Prohibtion - making alcohol illegal attracted dubious individuals and outright criminals and products of lower quality, with little recourse if anything went wrong. How about legalizing competition… oh, right, you can’t have that.
At any rate, it’s clear the patients are suffering in the “legal” system,either because it’s too slow or too expensive (most likely, both). Ask that if somebody was badly in need of a bone graft, would they wait for however long it takes, root for a reform that will make the system even worse, or try this way?
Who’s property is being damaged or hurt by an individual selling their own organs? None.
How do they make sure harmful bone grafts don’t make it into patients right now? Nothing would change, just that there would be a higher supply of bone grafts.
Also, I could have swore Walter Block wrote about a market for organs, but for the life of me I can’t find the paper.
There is also a nice amount of articles on Mises dealing with organs, but here is a link to a WSJ article on the subject: