Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organsby Kieran Healy
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2006/08/economists_and_.html ( ) no reviews | add a review
More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual-often anonymous-may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers. Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent-contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor's altruism or the size of a financial incentive. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNone
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)362.17Social sciences Social problems and services; associations Social problems of & services to groups of people People with physical illnesses Specific servicesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
|