Today’s guest is the Israeli sociologist, Hagai Boas, a four-time organ transplant recipient and the author of The Political Economy of Organ Transplantation. Hagai is the second transplant recipient on the podcast (Sally Satel has received two kidney transplants), but I’ve never met anyone before who has been transplanted *four* times, or who has purchased an organ on the black market, as Hagai did with his third transplant. Boas is the director of the Science, Technology, and Society unit at Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. He is also a senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University.
This segment of the interview was very powerful:
"Hagai Boas: It was very difficult then and it is still now. And I knew that I'm doing something which is wrong. I'm still thinking that it is wrong. There is no way that I want to rationalize that in any way. It was awful, it was abusive in a way. It was difficult, and I had no choice but to do it. And I'm not covering or laundering it in any way. I bought an organ. This is the invisible scar, let's say, that’s been accompanying me since then."
My brief review of the book is here
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