bib entry

Goodwinn, Michele(2006). Black Markets:Supply and demand of body parts. New York. Cambridge University Press.

I decided to read this book because I previously read an essay about the book. In her book, Goodwinn relates organ donation with slavery. One reason she makes this comparision is because there are many African Americans who are currently on the list to receive organs, but that few African Americans are organ donors. Her reasons for making the comparison to slavery is that body parts can be considered spare parts that can be bought and sold just like people were during the time of slavery. The title of her book also does double duty because she makes many references to the illegal sale of organs in the black market. Goodwinn goes through all the legalities of organ donation, mentions why our current system is not working and that we cannot rely on the altruistic nature of the human race to increase organ donation. She suggests that Financial compensation could be the answer and gives insight into why selling organs would not be comparable to slavery.
This book was a little bit confusing to me because I wasn't exactly sure where she was going with the slavery thing except to say that selling body parts could compare to selling slaves, but then she turns around and says they are not really the same and that the African American community should not be offended. She does talk a lot about how minorities are at greater risks to need an organ, but have far lesser donation rates. I am left wondering if this has to do with the fact that many more minorities are under insured or have no insurance at all, the author suggests that minorities lack the education needed to fully understand the procurement system and that age old ideals of racism are still in place when it comes to the attitudes of giving someone of another race the opportunity to live. The book gave me further insight into the black market of organ selling and that it really does exist as a serious problem. Perhaps regulation would solve this as the author believes or maybe it would put it further under ground which could result in less than substandard practices of obtaining these organs. The ideas in this book were interesting to me and I will use several of the authors ideas in my research.