The organ shortage crisis in America : incentives, civic duty, and closing the gap / Andrew Michael Flescher.

Nearly 120,000 people are in need of healthy organs in the United States.. Every ten minutes a new name is added to this list, while each day eight people die waiting for an organ to become available. Worse, the gap between those in need of an organ and the number of available donors is growing: our traditional reliance on cadaveric organ donation is insufficient, and in recent years there has been a decline in the number of living donors as well as in the percentage of living donors relative to overall kidney donors. Some transplant surgeons and policy advocates suggest a market solution and legalizing the sale of organs, Andrew Michael Flescher objects to this approach, citing concerns about social justice, commodification, and patient safety. Given that, what is the most efficacious means of attracting prospective living kidney donors? Flescher, drawing on scores of interviews with donors and patients, suggests that inculcating a sense of altruism and civic duty is a more effective means of increasing donor participation than purely financial incentives. He encourages individuals to spend time with patients on dialysis, advocating donor "chains" in order to facilitate relationships between donors and recipients, and creating sacred spaces in hospitals such as a "wall of heroes" to recognize those who sacrifice their body parts for others.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction : the organ shortage crisis in America -- Motivations for giving and especially precious goods -- Duty -- A word about the audience and purpose of this book -- Organization -- The case for legalizing the sale of organs -- Markets as a solution, if not a virtue -- Costs and equity -- "The tyranny of the gift" -- Financial incentives, libertarianism, and the black market -- Iran -- A legal, regulated market for organ trade -- Ethical concerns with legalizing the sale of organs -- The utility of utility -- Selling organs and society's impoverished -- Selling organs and public safety -- Commodification -- Moving from ethical to pragmatic considerations -- Organ donation, financial motivation, and civic duty -- Paying it forward -- Wolfenschiessen, Switzerland -- How buying a good changes a good -- The difference between lump sum incentives and compensatory measures -- Duty -- Living donors and the confluence of altruism and self-regard -- The complexity of human motivation and the myth of "unmotivated altruism" -- Living donors and living donor advocacy -- Health benefits for living donation -- Reflections of a living donor advocate -- Making altruism practical -- Reducing disincentives and opening doors to virtue -- Paired exchanges and donor chains -- Incentivizing opting-in -- Programs to compensate lost wages and travel expenses -- Walls of heroes and other means of publicly acknowledging living donors -- Non-monetary valuable, comparable goods -- Helping virtue along -- Conclusion : two to four hours of your life.

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