I want to buy your tonsils on eBay. Is that so wrong?

Every Tuesday night, after dancing at Wownet, we get a group of people together to go to Friendly’s. We’re generally horrible customers; we’re loud, we shoot spitballs and play with straws, and we keep them past closing time most weeks. We’re also most of their Tuesday night business, so I guess they don’t care.

Conversation is not the right word for what usually goes on at these gatherings. There are usually too many people to carry on a single coherent conversation. I’m sure that actual discourse occurs somewhere between the tables, but to the casual observer, it undoubtedly just sounds like a lot of random noise, laughing, and miscellaneous shenanigans.

So I was more than a little surprised when an actual conversation broke out among about half of us. And whenthe topic turned to the ethical arguments for why we can or cannot sell various body parts.

First, a word of caution for the unfortunate Republican who just might cross this site. As I’m sure you have guessed, the conversation was completely unproductive. People like us can’t possibly discuss or decide moral issues. We live in the wrong state to judge them. New Yorkers in general (and probably Ithacans in particular) are in fact completely amoral. Everyone knows that all people in ‘blue’ states are. Witness this right-wing nutjob (a term I use only when truly appropriate), who correctly notes that the U.S. would be better off without the states of “California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware.” Who can possibly argue with this reasoning?

• BUSH USA is predominantly white; devoutly Christian (mostly Protestant); openly, vigorously heterosexual; an open land of single-family homes and ranches; economically sound (except for a few farms), but not drunk with cyberworld business development, and mainly English-speaking, with a predilection for respectfully uttering “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir.”
• GORE/KERRY USA is ethnically diverse; multi-religious, irreligious or nastily antireligious; more sexually liberated (if not in actual practice, certainly in attitude); awash with condo canyons and other high-end real estate bordered by sprawling, squalid public housing or neglected private homes, decidedly short of middle-class neighborhoods; both high tech and oddly primitive in its commerce; very artsy, and Babelesque, with abnormally loud speakers.

So, conceding total defeat at the hands of a superior moral power, let me pose the following question. Why can we sell eggs, sperm, or baby teeth, but not kidneys?

The best answer we could come up with had to do with the renewability of the body part, regardless of its necessity or its use. Body parts that are renewable are fine and dandy to sell, but those that don’t come back are verboten. Maybe that’s why we practically force our kids to sell their baby teeth to the tooth poacher, but modern society finds the idea of selling adult teeth for money distateful.

Still, there’s something missing from the argument. Are baby teeth really a renewable body part? I won’t be getting anymore baby teeth anytime soon. Are sperm and eggs renewable body parts? Are they body parts at all? And if they aren’t, why can I sell my half-kids by the load for a lousy $50? Does what I’m selling it for matter at all? How can it be moral to sell my (renewable) urine so that some kid can pass his probation drug test, but immoral to sell my (non-renewable) kidney, saving someone’s life? What about selling whole bodies for purposes that leave the body available for reuse, like prostitution?

I can’t answer these questions. Maybe you can. Let me know if you figure it out. But there you have it, a bunch of amoral people from one of those amoral liberal states talking about morals. Intelligently, respectfully, while shooting spitballs at each other. And you thought it couldn’t happen.

Posted on November 10th, 2004 by Lee
Filed under: Uncategorized