Thinking carefully about organ donation: Janet Radcliffe-Richards’s The Ethics of Transplants: Why Careless Thought Costs Lives

The most important question raised by organ transplantation has always been how to increase the number of transplantable organs. Numerous solutions have been proposed over the years, such as deemed consent systems and institutional changes like routine referrals. Yet, due to its controversial nature, one possible option remains untested and that is paying the living donor. As a leading scholar in transplantation ethics, Janet Radcliffe-Richards has dedicated over 30 years of her career to exploring why we feel uncomfortable about paying an organ donor and how this restriction ultimately leads to lives being lost. This chapter focuses on the culmination of her work on transplantation, The Ethics of Transplants: Why Careless Thought Costs Lives, which captures one of the most comprehensive analyses of the debates on organ markets. Within this chapter, it is discussed why The Ethics of Transplants is a leading work and how it has influenced our understanding of this contemporary subject. The chapter is concluded by looking beyond Radcliffe-Richards’s contribution to the paid donation scholarship and suggesting that her unique application of moral reasoning might be useful in deconstructing and analysing arguments surrounding xenotransplantation and three-dimensional bioprinted organs as alternative sources for transplantation.