Libertarians Strangely Slow to Defend Man Accused of Buying, Selling Kidneys

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Brooklyn Man Accused of Buying, Selling Human Kidneys; Libertarians Strangely Slow to Defend Him (Updated)
By Roy Edroso in Civil Liberties, Crime, Featured, Naked Lunch
Thursday, Jul. 23 2009 @ 5:09PM

Prominent libertarians like Megan McArdle (http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/the_gift_of_life.php) don't understand why there isn't an open market on which people can buy and sell organs -- fresh ones, she means, suitable for transplantation -- to meet their medical or financial needs. We can't understand why these people haven't leapt to the defense of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who just got swept up in that big Jersey sting this morning. Apparently he wasn't nabbed for the same tiresome political graft as most of the others -- Rosenbaum was stung for trying to sell a guy's kidney, which in our Obama socialist age is considered a crime.

Word had gotten around that Rosenbaum was an organ broker (he got them from Israel, where they apparently thrive), so the FBI sent an undercover agent to tell Rosenbaum that her uncle needed a kidney. After laying out some plausible deniability -- he told the agent it wasn't the kidney she'd be paying $160,000 for, but "compensation for the time" -- Rosenbaum was ready to talk turkey, or at least giblets. He even provided a reference -- a guy to whom he'd sold a kidney earlier. Asked by the agent why anyone would give up their kidney, the recipient said, "I guess he needed the money."

Just so: There are lots of folks out there who need to send kids to school, or replace their siding, or pay off loan sharks -- yet our nanny state prevents them from selling their own guts to do it.

We've checked McArdle's site, Reason, Drew Carey -- no words of support for Rosenbaum yet. Surely they realize that this is the sort of case that will draw the common people to their side -- why the delay? Maybe Movable Type is down.

Update: McArdle responds, thinks we should explain why we favor "driving organ sales to the black market" -- if you outlaw organ peddling, only outlaws will peddle organs -- and why "we should prevent people from voluntarily donating a kidney," which doesn't seem to have anything to do with what Rosenbaum was up to, but probably does in an Unintended Consequences way unfathomable to us littlebrains. She also expresses concern for dialysis patients -- which we share, having known one, though it makes us no more eager to further incentivize the desperate to sell their guts -- and declares that she does not support Rosenbaum's breaking of laws, so the movement will have to wait a while longer for its John Brown, alas.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/07/jersey_man_accu.php

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Moral Quandaries that Aren't

24 Jul 2009 11:04 am
Roy Edroso unctuously asks for someone to defend the Brooklyn chap who was just arrested for selling organs.  I'd rather see him justify not paying for kidneys, when this is the result of the shortage.  Justify driving organ sales to the black market, where the brokers get rich, the sellers get a pittance, and only the rich can afford them, rather than taking the money we currently spend on dialysis to compensate those who are willing to help provide the gift of a dialysis-free life to others.  Bonus question:  explain why we should prevent people from voluntarily donating a kidney when living kidney donors do not appear to have an elevated risk of kidney failure without resorting to any of the following

   1. Huffy declarations that anyone who disagrees with you must be amoral
   2. Appeals to the fact that many other people are also against organ donation
   3. Invoking the infamous "ick" factor involved in selling a body part


# Extra credit:  do all of the above, to someone on longterm dialysis who is legally prevented from buying an organ, or having the government buy one for her.
#

# Double extra credit:  prove that we don't need no stinkin' market by voluntarily donating your own kidney for the sheer joy of helping others.
#

As for the chap in Brooklyn:  he broke the law.  I'm against that, even if the law is stupid, which is why I dutifully sign for my sudafed, instead of breaking into the pharmacy after hours.  On the other hand, the law seems grotesque to me, possibly near the level where one has a duty to break it.  On the third hand, he's clearly not acting out of any sense of moral duty.  But I'm not going to celebrate the fact of one less live kidney donation in the world, even if the person who gets stuck on the machine is affluent and thus presumptively deserves it.

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