ABSTRACT
At the end of the last chapter I noted that although respect for autonomy and concern for personal well-being appear morally to justify both a current market for human transplant kidneys and the regulation of that market, it might be that this appearance is illusory because the sale of one’s kidney might be so dangerous as to justify its paternalistic prohibition. This concern with the dangers of kidney selling does not work as an objection to the moral permissibility of a current market in human kidneys. Indeed, one of the most common arguments offered to support the view that such a market is morally permissible is based on the premise that the sale of a kidney would be no more dangerous than many types of activities that are morally permissible. 1 Since this is so, proponents of this pro-market argument by analogy continue, it must also be morally permissible for persons to sell their kidneys in a current market for them. 2 The response to this argument is predictable: those who morally oppose a current market in human kidneys attempt to draw disanalogies between the selling of a kidney and the pursuit of other dangerous activities to try to show that, while the latter are morally permissible, the former is not. 3
