Word: sales
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Oscar Wilde's aphorism comes close to summarizing John Tower's last-ditch defense. Forget the sandstorm of charges swirling around the diminutive former Senator; ignore the serious questions of sobriety, sexual escapades and the sale of Government expertise. To the beleaguered nominee for Defense Secretary, the real issue is the motivation of his judges in the Senate, who he implied were hypocrites pursuing the partisan politics of personal pique. "Is it an acceptable standard for Senators late in the evening who've had a few drinks . . . ((to)) vote on vital issues of nuclear deterrence?" Tower asked with rhetorical venom...
Even Margaret Thatcher's devotion to the free market has some limits, it seems. Reacting to newspaper reports that poor Turkish peasants are being paid to go to London and give up a kidney for transplant, the British Prime Minister said that "the sale of kidneys or any organs of the body is utterly repugnant." Emergency legislation is now being prepared for swift approval by Parliament to make sure that capitalism does not perform its celebrated magic in the market for human organs...
...idea that government sometimes should protect people from themselves. But it is no more dangerous to sell one of your kidneys than it is to give one away to a close relative -- a transaction we not only allow but admire. On health grounds alone, you can't ban the sale without banning the gift as well. Furthermore, the sale of a kidney is not necessarily a foolish decision that society ought to protect you from. To pay for a daughter's operation, it seems the opposite...
...more to encourage organ donation at death for the same reason. On the other hand, however cozy and egalitarian it might seem, a system that supplied all the kidneys we need through voluntary donation would be no special favor to our Turkish friend, who would be left with no sale and no $4,400. Why not at least let his heirs sell his kidneys when he dies? A commercial market in cadaver organs would wipe out the sale of live people's parts a lot more expeditiously than trying to encourage donations...
...course, I make this offer safe in the knowledge that there will always be some poor Turk ready to undercut me. So maybe, because of who the sellers inevitably will be, the sale of kidneys is by its very nature exploitation. A father shouldn't have to sacrifice a kidney to get a necessary operation for his daughter. Unfortunately, banning the kidney sale won't solve the problem of paying for the operation. Nor can the world yet afford expensive operations for everyone who needs one. And leaving aside the melodrama of the daughter's operation, we don't stop...