The kidney trade: or, the customer is always wrong

Much of the opinion scandalized by recent reports of kidneys being sold for transplant is significantly inconsistent. The sale of kidneys is not substantially different from practices espoused, and indeed endorsed, by many of those who condemn the former. Our moral concern, I suggest, needs to focus on the customer's actions rather than the seller's; and on the implications for larger questions of the considerations to which this gives rise.