ABSTRACT
The laws in most countries forbid treating human body parts as commodities for sale. That is the key feature of policies about human body parts. Some critics argue that such policies are responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of human beings each year. Every day, vast numbers of potentially useful human organs or tissues worldwide are buried or burned with the dead bodies that contain them. This chapter considers some of the many ways such markets are structured and what if anything some vital ethical considerations suggest about the merits of such markets. There are multiple important dimensions to the possibility of selling human body parts and tissues. The chapter offers an overview of some such policies and moral concerns. It considers the potential benefits of markets for body parts and tissues and how to begin to grapple with some ethical worries. The chapter explores whether some such markets is justified.
