Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Cohen Talks Organ Econ.

Lloyd Cohen is not afraid of controversy. So when he drew supply and demand curves for human body parts on a whiteboard to illustrate the benefits of a market for organs, he did so with the confidence of someone who has been promoting the idea for over two decades.

“We have this crazy system now in which these vital organs are being fed to the worms,” said Cohen, a professor of economics law at George Mason University.

He presented his solution in a lecture at Georgetown on Monday: a market for human organs. The basic premise of the proposal, he said, is a very simple position.

“If you pay people for something, they are more likely to give it to you than if you don’t.”

According to Cohen, one of the major problems with the current system is that the decision of organ donation is often left up to others – parents, spouses or even hospitals.

“There’s something kind of distasteful about that,” he said.

He also takes fault with the way organs are currently distributed by the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing.

“The way that organs are currently allocated does not fit some great Platonic ideal,” he said. “That’s nonsense.”

Cohen’s plan would allow people to opt into a program in which they would be paid $5,000 for each of their vital organs after their death. The money would go either to their estate or to a designated beneficiary.

“You basically sign up for a contingent life insurance plan of what could be up to $30,000,” he said.The organs could then be distributed either by sale or by the same system in place now.

Cohen also responded to many common criticisms of a market for organs, including the oft-cited perception that poverty would coerce some into selling their organs. But, he said, in his system, organs can only be harvested after death.

“Dead people are neither rich nor poor. They are simply dead.”

Cohen didn’t take issue with many who find the idea of an organ market shallow.

“It is shallow,” he said. “Economics is a shallow discipline.”

But he maintains that the principles of economics still can and should be applied to organs.

“It’s not something that’s very mainstream,” said Jeffrey Niedermaier (COL ’14), a member of Hoyas for Liberty, which co-sponsored the event along with the Healthcare Executives of Georgetown University and the Georgetown University Lecture Fund.

“But I hope people just learn to look at things from a different angle,” Niedermaier said.”

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