A little behind on your rent or mortgage? Need some cash fast for your kid’s college career? Is your car up on blocks? Does your toupee need some serious dry cleaning? Consider selling your body. No, not like that. LIterally. Sell your body. In parts.
For the most part, it’s illegal to sell your body in Britain. But, in fact, there are various legal ways human body parts can be sold that don’t involve waking up in a bath of ice with a kidney missing. In a research experiment, I tried to see how much of the human body can lawfully be put up for sale: by trying to sell as much of my own body as I could. It turns out pretty much everything God gave us can be sold.
Why would I do this? Body parts are sold on the black market because there’s often a genuine medical need. This year, 1,000 people in the UK will die on the organ transplant list. Couples unable to conceive wait years for donations of egg or sperm. Some doctors argue that a legal market for life-giving body parts should to be created in order to increase donations. But there are enormous ethical concerns and so far the government has refused to allow any kind of financial incentive for donors, apart from allowing some expenses. I investigated whether the law is hindering a legitimate market, firstly looking at what’s already on sale here in Britain – and whether the price is reasonable.
Turns out there’s a market for bodily fluids, hair, nails, even excreta. Of course, if you want some real coin, you have to think kidney, lung, eggs, a thorax—you know, the big stuff.
How long before advocates of laissez faire everything make a push to legalize the selling of body parts? Hey, it’s your body. You should be able to do what you want with it, no? Remember “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries”? Pancreas pushers will need a new slogan to include guys, as well as unisex organs.
“Keep your BLANK off my prostate/gall bladder/adrenals!”
Any suggestions?





Lars Walker
August 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM
“Keep your filthy hands off my Islets of Langerhans!”
Anthony Sacramone
August 20, 2012 at 10:01 AM
Excellent! You win! What, I have no idea. Perhaps a slightly used uvula (and who can’t use an extra?).
Barry Arrington
August 21, 2012 at 10:10 PM
“How long before advocates of laissez faire everything make a push to legalize the selling of body parts?”
Negative several years. Radical libertarians have been advocating for a free market in body parts for quite a while now.