Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs
Kieran Healy
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.
“As an economic sociologist, Healy adds important dimensions to the intensifying debate over organ procurement. He reminds both advocates and opponents of markets that commercial transactions are embedded in social structures and as likely as any other exchanges to have social meaning.” – Virginia Postrel, The New York Times
“ ... offers a compelling challenge to the regnant categories in the debate over how to increase the procurement of transplantable organs … Whatever one’s views on how the future of organ procurement should take shape, this concise, accessible, and provocative book is essential reading.” – Ben Hippen, American Journal of Transplantation.
“Elegantly argued and well written, Last Best Gifts makes a landmark contribution to the our understanding of the social foundation of the moral order of exchange” – Jens Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
“... offers a timely, sophisticated and original analysis of the complex organizational terrain of blood and organ donation.” – Wendy Espeland, Northwestern University.
Last Best Gifts is published by the University of Chicago Press.
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