Real orphan-crushing machine-creation vibes here. Like yes, you own your body. In most developed countries you can’t kill yourself legally though, the WSJ writer is completely wrong in that. In a handful of places: 5 (out of 50) US states, Canada, and 6 (out of 27) European countries, 6 of the 7 Australian States, and New Zealand. That is not “most developed countries” that’s simply 8 countries and 2 partial countries.

They simply gloss over the most important argument which is poor people selling kidneys to rich people (or richer people) by just saying “well then just regulate it better.” We can’t even regulate our industries in the USA well enough to keep them from rapidly combining and monopolizing the entire market down to a handful of companies, you think we are going to stop the medical industry from buying kidneys for cents and charging them for thousands? Bullshit and the writer knows it.

Also, a person with just one kidney does not function just like life as normal. The other kidney left undergoes compensatory hypertrophy. It enlarges to 70% larger than normal to compensate. It’s incredibly important to stay healthy and eat very carefully for the rest of your life. If selling body parts were legal then you’d see a lot of seller’s remorse.

We should strive for a community where we don’t need to incentivize people to give up their ways of life.

The perverse incentive simply makes it untenable as a policy.