About 4,000 people in America die every year while waiting for kidney transplants.
asserted
people → die → transplants
More than 95,000 currently need regular dialysis to stay alive while waiting for transplants.
asserted
95,000 → need → transplants
The average person who needs a kidney must endure the discomfort and restrictions of dialysis for three to five years during the wait.
asserted
who → need → wait
Most countries have organ-donation systems like America's—and long waitlists.
asserted
countries → have → America's
Iran, by contrast, legalized payment to kidney donors in 1988; within 11 years the country eliminated its waitlist.
asserted
country → legalize → waitlist
Payment compensates donors for their time, pain, and risk; it also increases the supply of willing donors.
asserted
it → compensate → donors
People often object to paying donors on the grounds that it is wrong to commodify the human body.
asserted
it → object → body
Compensation, they say, would reduce a person from a human being with dignity and inherent worth to a vending machine of fluids, tissues, and organs.
asserted
they → say → fluids
This argument does not hold up.
asserted
argument → hold → ?
We Commodify Our Bodies All the Time
Women have been paid to nurse other women's babies for nearly all of recorded history.
asserted
Women → commodify → history
Virtually every major religion has praised or affirmed wet nursing as a profession.
asserted
religion → praise → profession
The Catholic Church has two patron saints of wet nursing; the Quran explicitly authorizes payment for it; rabbinic law treats it as ordinary labor.
asserted
law → have → labor
Yet wet nursing clearly commodifies the human body.
asserted
nursing → commodifie → body
The nurse is paid to produce her milk for someone else's child.
asserted
nurse → pay → child
If someone wanted to avoid using any good or service that relied on bodily commodification, he would have to go the way of Jehovah's Witnesses and refuse blood transfusions on ethical grounds.
asserted
he → want → grounds
True, blood donors are rarely paid in the United States, but a robust secondary market exists for donated blood.
asserted
market → pay → blood
Blood-collection services such as the Red Cross sell blood to hospitals for a few hundred dollars per pint, and hospitals charge insurance companies a few thousand dollars per pint.
asserted
hospitals → sell → pint
Even if a bodily product is not paid for at collection, it can still be commodified further down the supply chain.
asserted
it → pay → chain
In America, plasma donors get paid about $50 per donation and can donate up to two times per week.
asserted
donors → pay → week
That system is incredibly beneficial to donors: They are less likely to take out high-interest payday loans; they lower their drug use, and areas with paid donation centers have less crime.
asserted
areas → take → crime
The U.S. is one of a few countries that have legalized paid plasma donation, but countries that have not done so still have to pay for plasma.
asserted
that → legalize → plasma
Those countries have chronic plasma shortages and must import it, typically from the U.S.
asserted
countries → have → U.S.
Again, just because donors are not paid does not mean the product is not being bought and sold by other entities.
asserted
product → pay → entities
The top five plasma-producing countries (the U.S., Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic) produce 90 percent of the world's plasma, despite having just 10 percent of the world's population.
asserted
countries → produce → population
All of them pay donors.
asserted
All → pay → donors
Plasma is crucial for making a variety of medicines.
asserted
Plasma → make → medicines
It is used in anti-D immune globulin, which is deployed in pregnancies in which a mother's immune system attacks the baby; that medicine saves the lives of about 10,000 babies a year in the U.S. alone.
asserted
medicine → use → U.S.
Plasma is used in immunoglobulin, which is critical for people who have primary immunodeficiency.
asserted
who → use → immunodeficiency
It is also used in C1-esterase inhibitors, which helps people with hereditary angioedema.
asserted
which → use → angioedema
Here's another sort of bodily commodification: paid human clinical trials for drugs.
asserted
sort → pay → drugs
Phase I drug trials are done on healthy human subjects, with informed consent, to check a drug's safety and to establish proper dosage.
asserted
trials → do → dosage
These participants play a vital role: Approximately 30 percent of drugs in Phase I are not safe enough to advance to Phase II.
asserted
percent → play → Phase
Drugs found unsafe rarely seriously harm participants; only about 0.4 percent of participants experience serious bodily harm.
asserted
percent → find → harm
Drug development would not work without human testing.
asserted
development → work → testing
Anyone who wanted to avoid drugs developed with paid test subjects would have to avoid all drugs developed in the U.S. since at least 1962, when the modern multiphase trial system was established.
asserted
system → want → 1962
The multiphase drug trial system is used nearly globally; essentially all countries do some form of Phase 1 drug trials.
asserted
countries → use → trials
Most countries allow paying participants, but the U.S. offers the highest compensation and has the most testing.
asserted
U.S. → allow → testing
While some critics have raised complaints against the trials, those arguments allege that the volunteers are inadequately protected or compensated.
asserted
volunteers → raise → trials
They don't say that the trials are immoral because the participants are paid or that those payments injure the volunteers' dignity.
asserted
payments → say → dignity
It Is Good To Value Life and Risk
Then there's life insurance.
asserted
It → value → Life
…and 24 more, not listed.
The Aporia
