Should You Be Allowed To Sell Your Bone Marrow?

The law has long made selling bone marrow a crime, despite the pleas of cancer patients, and others, who need bone marrow transplants. But this month, a powerful court in California changed the rules – at least in part of the country – declaring that a federal law that bars buying and selling bodily organs but not fluids such as blood or semen does not apply to bone marrow. 


The ruling has been widely hailed, especially since advances in extracting bone marrow make the procedure not all that different from donating blood. But buried in the case is a more difficult question: what if the ruling helps erode the broader prohibition on selling body parts? Would that be a good thing?

More