This chapter critiques the twin World Health Organization (WHO) principles of self-sufficiency and nonremuneration in organs and blood, urging a more sensible approach to the scarce resources of blood products and transplantable organs. WHO and other experts have failed to acknowledge the tension between self-sufficiency and nonremuneration in blood products--no country that fails to pay plasma donors is self-sufficient. Furthermore, international cooperation and cross-border transplantation provide numerous benefits, especially in smaller countries and those without well-developed domestic exchange programs. The combination of these twin principles denies to health care many of the benefits that trade has brought to so many other human endeavors and the effects are particularly damaging to low and middle income countries. Substances of human origin are special, but not so special that we prohibit plasma or organ donation. We should be open to exploring and experimenting with ways to bring to health care some of the benefits that trade has brought to so many other human endeavors, such as the production and distribution of food and lifesaving vaccines and other medicines.
Kim Krawiec’s current research analyzes “taboo trades” — exchanges that are contested by society and, in some cases, forbidden altogether. She has written on commercial surrogacy, egg and sperm markets, and sex work. At the moment, much of her work is on incentives for organ donation. Although financial incentives are part of the menu, she is most interested in nonfinancial incentives, such as kidney swaps, NEAD chains and priority systems that provide an incentive to donate. Krawiec hosts the podcast “Taboo Trades.”
Another area of her research centers on the regulation of financial markets and business organizations. Krawiec has extensively examined the administrative process surrounding the Volcker Rule, a complex and highly contested provision of the Dodd-Frank Act. She has also researched corporate boards of directors. Through an ethnographic method, this work analyzes directors’ views on the workings of the corporate boardroom and board relations with management, with a special emphasis on directors’ views on race and gender diversity in the boardroom.
Prior to joining academia, Krawiec was a member of the commodity and derivatives group at the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell. She has served as a commentator for the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative (CEELI) of the American Bar Association and on the faculty of the National Association of Securities Dealers Institute for Professional Development at the Wharton School of Business. She earned her juris doctorate from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University.
Krawiec also has taught law at Duke Law School, the University of North Carolina, Harvard and Northwestern, where she received the 1999-2000 Robert Childres Award for Teaching Excellence.