Don Boudreaux on organ markets

I discussed the launch of LifeSharers in New Zealand a while ago. The LifeSharers program is a way to expand the supply of organs available for transplants. Now I see that Donald J. Boudreaux is discussing going one step further and having an open market for organs. Boudreaux has an excellent letter that he has sent to the Wall Street Journal on the topic of a market for organs. Boudreaux writes,

Louise Benson says that allowing people to sell their transplantable body organs would result in poor people being "enticed by the money" to become suppliers; she thinks this outcome would be "sick" (Letters, May 31). Ignore Dr. Benson's questionable presumption that her personal cultural aesthete should trump the freedom of other adults to make such choices. Focus instead on the economics. If organ sales were liberalized, the availability of organs would rise and their prices would fall. Transplant surgery would become more affordable and, thus, more lives - not only of the rich but of all classes - would be improved and saved.

What's truly sick is government's continued prohibition of organ sales.

Boudreaux makes a good point, that having a market in organs would lower the price of transplants and thus save lives via an increase in the amount of such surgery done. Without a prohibition on organ sales the quantity supplied of organs would be higher, than it is now, and this would expand the supply of transplant surgery. The increase in supply would drive down the price of transplant surgery and lead to an increase in the number of transplants done, thereby saving more lives.