Justice and the Coercive Taking of Cadaveric Organs

One of the central questions in discussions of distributive justice is that of the interest of the badly off, or the worst off, in the financial assets of the well off. By contrast, theorists of distributive justice are remarkably silent on the important and complicated issue of access to the organs of the dead. In this article, I aim to show that if one thinks that the poor’s interest in leading a minimally flourishing life, and a fortiori in remaining alive, is important enough to confer on them a right to some of the material resources of the well off, by way of taxation and, in particular, by way of restrictions on bequests and inheritance, one must think that that very same interest is important enough to confer on the sick a right to the organs of the now-dead healthy. I make a case to that effect, and I explore disanalogies between the posthumous transfer of resources and the posthumous transfer of organs. Finally, I rebut two objections to my proposal.