The prologue to Dr. Sigrid Fry-Revere's forthcoming new book The Kidney Sellers is entitled "A Personal Journey."  This section delivers what it promises, detailing the author's academic and parental motivations to explore the "compensated organ donation" system in Iran.  I found myself eager to read on.

The prologue is divided into three subsections.  The first subsection introduces the reader to the author's personal motivation to solve the world organ allocation shortage: at age 10 months her son was diagnosed with kidney cancer definitively necessitating an immediate left nephrectomy and potentially necessitating a future kidney transplant.  The second subsection explains how her academic evaluations of "compensated organ donation" when she was the director of bioethics studies at the Cato Institute ultimately led to her trip to study firsthand (the first Westerner to accomplish this task) the Iranian kidney procurement system.  The third subsection specifies Dr. Fry-Revere's goals for her book.  Interspersed into all three subsections are common criticisms levied by opponents of "compensated organ donation".  

The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger also feels compelled to mention the "guilty pleasure" he experienced when reading the second subsection of the prologue, in which Dr. Fry-Revere relays the disturbing circumstances that led to her resignation from the Cato Institute.  Delight ensued because I have been highly suspicious of the "libertarian" credentials of Cato for years and the author's story provided additional evidence for my skepticism.  I was also thrilled to learn that the administration of Cato imagines the Institute has a "reputation as a serious Washington player", because delusional thinking typically precedes the collapse of any organization.    

The initial section of Dr. Sigrid Fry-Revere's new book The Kidney Sellers is entitled "A Few Words About this Book".  It acts as a pre-prologue, in which an author provides context to the work in a less formal tone as compared to the more formal tone of a typical prologue.  Dr. Fry-Revere utilizes her version of the pre-prologue to detail the labor expended to collect the information used to write this nonfiction book, explain her decision to pen a "nonfiction adventure" rather than an "academic monograph," explicate the reason she elected to change the names of many of the persons mentioned in the book, reveal the difficulties she encountered while attempting to translate Farsi/Persian terms and names into English, and emphasize that (in contrast to the American State) Iran has solved the kidney shortage problem with its "legalized compensated kidney donation" system.  She also humbly asserts that she doesn't "know how to solve the U.S. organ shortage".  The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger, fortunately less humble than Dr. Fry-Revere, claims he does know how to solve the American State's organ shortage problem: abolish the American State.

I was contacted via email this week by Sigrid Fry-Revere, J.D., Ph.D.  Avid readers of this blog should recognize that name because she has been mentioned several times in multiple prior posts regarding her compelling libertarian theory of "personhood" and her book review of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.'s The Foundations of Bioethics.  Dr. Fry-Revere has written a new book entitled The Kidney Sellers: A Journey of Discovery in Iran, which will be published on February 1, 2014.  She thought the LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger may be interested in blogging about her new book.  She was absolutely correct.  For the next several weeks I shall review this fascinating (and timely) new work chapter-by-chapter and post my observations on this blog.  I then plan to edit the blog posts into a book review and submit to Libertarian Papers for possible publication. 

The relevant website for Dr. Fry-Revere's new book is as follows: http://www.TheKidneySellers.com.  

The sample blog post provided by the promotional website is as follows: "Sigrid Fry-Revere, a bioethicist, lawyer, and world traveler has just released an intriguing non-fiction adventure story.  She is the first Westerner to give an account of kidney selling in Iran, the only country in the world claiming not to have a kidney shortage.  Starting from before Sigrid visits Iran, she chronicles her quest to find answers to the organ shortage.  On that journey, we are introduced to the origins and causes of the U.S. kidney shortage, the suffering of Americans, and Sigrid's personal story of a son with kidney cancer.  Once in Iran, Sigrid explores a country not known by many Americans.  She provides cultural insights and a first-ever look at Iran's system of compensated kidney donation.  Readers will be moved by the touching personal stories, both from American and Iran, and impelled to reexamine their preconceptions about organ donation."

The seventh chapter of the sixth edition of Beauchamp and Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics evaluates justice.  The authors discuss the concept of justice, define the formal principle of justice and material principles of justice, and analyze various theories of justice.  They ultimately recommend that "society recognize global rights to health and enforceable rights to a decent minimum of health care within a framework for allocation that incorporates both utilitarian and egalitarian standards." 

The LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger shall return to dissect this chapter in future multiple blog posts due to the comprehensive nature of this chapter.

Highlights include the authors noting that "it is widely held that health care is a special good" in bioethics literature (utter idiocy if accurate), recognizing libertarian theories of justice (but mentioning only Robert Nozick in the relevant discussion), and mentioning Tristam Engelhardt's argument that "society should call a halt to claims of fairness or justice precisely at the point of this distinction between the unfair and the unfortunate" (clearly a ridiculous idea).

The long-term vanity goal of the LIBERTARIAN BIOETHICS BLOGger is now obvious: future editions of the Principles of Biomedical Ethics should discuss me when discussing libertarian bioethics theories.