A01=Kieran Healy
altruism
Author_Kieran Healy
benevolence
black market
blood donors
capitalism
Category=JKS
Category=MBP
Category=MNQ
collection
commodification
donations
economics
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethics
europe
exchange
fairness
gifts
healthcare
human body
incentives
justice
medicine
nonfiction
organ donation
organizations
politics
procurement
red cross
sacrifice
sale
sociology
tissues
transfusion
transplant
Product details
- ISBN 9780226322353
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 17 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Sep 2006
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplies 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 crucial role that institutions play in creating 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.
Kieran Healy is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Arizona.
