16th
The Wall Street Journal wants you to sell your liver.
True to its free market ideology, the Wall Street Journal ran an op ed today by a Dr. Sally Satel on why we should open up the organ donation system to the free market.
Um, WSJ, what? This woman is like the Sean Hannity of the medical world — calling for an end to the “prohibition policy” on organs and warning that unless we start offering people cash, the already-short supply of spare kidneys will all but dry up. She also laments the closing of the donor door by countries – such as the Philippines – that richer nations had been mining for their spare body parts.
The good Dr. Satel, who by the way is the author of other such gems as “PC, MD: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine” and “One Nation Under Therapy : How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance,” also forgets to mention how a free market system would mean that only the rich could get organs, but you know, c’est la vie. Still, it is a little amazing that the WSJ would run a piece championing a view that “Unfortunately, most of the world transplant establishment [like the W.H.O.!!!] does not share.”
Oh wait. Stop, and insert requisite joke about new WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch just needing to buy an extra heart here.