Poverty, Coercion, & the Organ Trade

Edited by Aviral Dhamija

Abstract

This paper is responding to one of the ethical arguments addressed in Janet Radcliffe Richards’ Consent with Inducements in regards to the permissibility of the organ trade. Specifically, this paper is a response to her claim that poverty cannot properly be considered to be coercive, due to the lack of a coercive agent. This paper argues that poverty ought to be considered coercive when viewed in the global context that the organ trade occurs within. Drawing on Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ anthropological works on the Israeli-Palestinian organ trade, this paper demonstrates how the state of poverty fits within Richards’ understanding of coercion.