Richard Epstein on the Economics of Organ Donation

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2006

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Richard Epstein, law professor at the University of Chicago, and Russ Roberts discuss the market for kidneys. Should people be allowed to buy and sell kidneys? How might a market for kidneys actually work in practice? Should mercenary motives be allowed to trump altruism? Epstein deals with these questions and more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, coming to you from the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of George Mason University.
0:12.1	We'd love to hear from you if you have any comments or feedback for us here at Econ Talk.
0:15.8	Please send me an email at Roberts at GMU.edu.
0:20.6	You can find more Econ Talk at www.econtalk.org along with readings and links related to
0:27.6	this podcast.
0:29.3	My guest today is Richard Epstein, the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor
0:33.7	of Law at the University of Chicago, and he's also the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior
0:38.1	Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
0:39.9	He's the author of numerous books and articles.
0:42.5	His latest book is titled How Progressives, Rewrote the Constitution, published by the
0:46.8	Cato Institute earlier this year.
0:49.3	And he recently had a piece in the Wall Street Journal on Oregon donation that is the subject
0:53.4	of our conversation today, Richard, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:56.0	It's very nice to be here.
0:58.0	What's the current situation for someone who wants a kidney transplant?
1:01.2	How's that work?
1:02.9	Right now it's a very complicated set of procedures, but we believe in treating kidneys as an item.
1:09.5	This is nationally not me, which is going to be allocated by Q. So what you have to do
1:14.4	is to get online and wait your turn.
1:16.6	It's even more complicated than that because there's more than one line and there are ways
1:21.0	to bust you over to the top.
	...

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