An Economist’s Case for Selling a Kidney
In a new book, Nobel laureate Alvin Roth argues that decriminalizing taboo markets can save lives.
llustration: Hitesh Sonar for Bloomberg
You almost certainly have two kidneys. There’s a smallish number of people to whom you might donate one of your kidneys, if it would save their life. Likewise, there’s a smallish number of people who would donate one of their kidneys to you, were you to need one. The problem is that there’s a high probability that none of those potential donors are compatible with you. To put it another way: Your spare kidney can save a life, but it probably can’t directly save the life of any of the individuals you care about the most.
Stanford University economist Alvin Roth won a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the most common solution to this problem, the donation chain. The insight is that if you’re willing to give up a kidney to save my life, maybe you don’t need to donate that kidney to me. Your kidney can go to someone compatible, while my replacement kidney comes from someone else’s loved one. By kick-starting a chain, a single altruistic donor can end up saving dozens of lives.