If You Oppose Paying Kidney Donors, You Should Oppose Paying Football Players And Boxers Too

Having concluded that simply advocating for compensated kidney donation was not sufficiently controversial, Phil Cook and I are now turning our sights on professional sports – specifically, professional football and boxing. In a piece just posted to SSRN, we contrast the compensation ban on organ donation with the legal treatment of football, boxing, and other violent sports in which both acute and chronic injuries to participants are common. While there is some debate about how best to regulate these sports in order to reduce the risks, there appears to be no serious debate about whether participants should be paid. Indeed, for the best adult football players, college scholarships and perhaps a professional contract worth multiple millions are possible.

Phil and I will likely spend part of the winter break as television viewers contributing to the NFL teams’ collective $56 billion valuation. But our position on paying kidney donors saves us from hypocrisy. If, however, you are one of the many, many people who believe it is unethical to compensate kidney donors, then you should be out protesting the NFL. And don’t even think about watching the latest boxing or MMA matches.

Over the next couple of posts, I’ll outline the gist of our argument and evidence. We focus on the core argument for a ban on compensation for kidney donation, namely the paternalistic concern that even well-informed adults will sometimes be enticed by a financial reward to donate a kidney when in fact that is not in their “true” self-interest. In this view, the allure of money, especially for those who are in debt and struggling to make ends meet, will overcome good sense, leading to “exploitation” and even “coercion” to which people with less income and education are particularly vulnerable. But the same concerns apply with still greater force to participation in violent sports. Whatever one concludes about the ethics of regulating risky choices, and the problematic aspects of choices involving money and risk, the current circumstance – ban compensation for kidney donors, permit compensation for participation in violent sports – appears difficult to defend.

Over the next few days, I’ll touch on these key points: the medical risk to participants, the consent process, social justice concerns, and social welfare considerations. The medical risks to a professional career in football, boxing, and other violent sports are much greater both in the near and long term than the risks of donating a kidney. On the other hand, the consent and screening process in professional sports is not as developed as in kidney donation. The social justice concerns stem from the fact that most players are black and some come from impoverished backgrounds. Finally, the net social benefit from compensating kidney donors – namely, saving thousands of lives each year and reducing the suffering of 100,000 more receiving dialysis – far exceeds the net social benefit of entertaining the public through professional sports.

Download the piece here. And check back in over the next few days for subsequent posts.

Comments

[Deep State Special Legal Counsel]

The same or better argument can be made for the entire firearms industry...

[anon]

Wow, that's the comment you chose not to delete?

I don't understand why anyone would delete the observation that it is sort of revolting to argue that the rich should be able to buy organs from poor people because the masses enjoy blood in the arena (and the rich derive substantial profits here too, by exploiting the mostly poor folks who serve as the fodder for this blood lust).

You are right! both activities should be seen as gross exploitation of persons' bodies for money and prevented! Why object to this agreement? YOu certainly must be very sensitive to the critique of your argument if you need to delete common sense observations ...

And that observation is this: you seem to be seriously arguing that the rich should be able to buy organs from the desperate poor because the rich can lawfully pay boxers to kill themselves slowly in the ring for their entertainment.

Again, if you were behind the veil of ignorance (I hope you know what that means) you would not make this argument. Only a privileged person with loads of financial security and leisure time could ever possibly even imagine it.

[anon]

PLease ignore the reference to deleting comments. Sorry for that error.