April 20, 2007

The Satisfactions of Altruism

To the Editor:

"Everyone involved in the transaction benefits except the donor." So commented Susan Brown and David Glenn in "The True Price of a Human Organ" (The Chronicle, March 23). I respond as someone who was about to donate a kidney to a stranger until I learned that my filtration rate was too low.

Your article relies on a market model when it concludes that the donor receives no benefits for what is "truly a gift." But it does not remind us that free-market economists