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Debate regarding organ sales is largely innocent of the history of thought on the matter. This volume seeks to remedy this shortcoming. Positions for or against a market in human organs are nested within moral intuitions, ontological or political theoretical premises, or understandings of special moral concerns, such as permissible uses of the body, which have a long history of analysis. The essays compass the views of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Mill and Christianity, as well as particular methodological approaches, such as the phenomenology of the body, natural law theory, legal theory and libertarian critique of legal theory. These discussions cluster a number of conceptually independent philosophical concerns: (1) What is the appropriate understanding of the relationship between persons and their bodies? (2) What does it mean to `own' an organ? (3) Do governments have moral authority to regulate how persons use their own body parts? (4) What are the costs and benefits of a market in human organs? Such questions are related by an urgent public health challenge: the considerable disparity between the number of patients who could significantly benefit from organ transplantation and the number of human organs available for transplantation. This volume explores the theoretical, normative, and historical foundations for alternative policies for procurement and transplantation of human organs.
List of contents
Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Sale of Organs.- Bodies and Persons: Ontological Questions.- Body and Soul in Greek Philosophy.- A Millian Perspective on the Relationship Between Persons and Their Bodies.- What Does It Mean To Be Somebody? Phenomenological Reflections and Ethical Quandaries.- An Orthodox Christian View of Persons and Bodies.- Natural Law and Natural Rights.- Personal Responsibility and Freedom in Health Care: A Contemporary Natural Law Perspective.- The Alienability of Lockean Natural Rights.- Inalienable Rights in the Moral and Political Philosophy of John Locke: A Reappraisal.- Metaphysical Quandaries and Moral Questions.- The Integrity of Body: Kantian Moral Constraints on the Physical Self.- Whose Body? What Body? The Metaphysics of Organ Transplantation.- The Impact of Biomedical Developments on the Legal Theory of the Mind-body Relationship.- The Body for Profit: Organ Sales and Moral Theory.- The Body for Fun, Beneficence, and Profit: A Variation on a Post-Modern Theme.- Despair, Desire, and Decision: A Fugal Response to Engelhardt.- The Sale of Organs and Obligations to One's Body: Inferences from the Histoy of Ethics.- Persons and Their Bodies: Key Arguments and Contemporary Critiques.- The Integrity of the Body: Critical Remarks on a Persistent Theme in Bioethics.- The Commercialization of Human Body Parts: Public Policy Considerations.
