Perspectives on the organ trade

'Commerce in Human Organs: A Study of Jewish Legal Themes Underlying a Contemporary Controversy' (Albany Law School Research Paper No. 1 for 2015-2016) by Sarah Beth D'Alessandro seeks to

highlight the various legal concepts and themes present in contemporary debates amongst Jewish legal scholars and analyses performed according to traditional Jewish law. This paper discusses the legality of transferring an organ regardless of the motivation or any accompanying compensation including issues related to wounding oneself in the case of inter vivos transplantation and issues relating to treatment of dead bodies in the case of postmortem transplantation. This paper discusses the permissibility of payment and rules governing payments as well as various social policy concerns such as motivating desired behaviors, paternalistic protective measures and the tension between individual concerns and communal concerns.