Since the 1930s it has been possible to transfer living biological material between persons for therapeutic benefit – first blood, and more recently solid organs, cellular matter, and reproductive tissues. In almost all jurisdictions organs and blood must be given as gifts, without recourse to money incentives or other kinds of valuable consideration. In this presentation I will review the history and reasoning that informed the framing of the gift relation as the organisational and ethical principle for blood banking in the mid-twentieth Century. I will then consider some of the ways this principle has been diluted, or indeed was never quite realised. The history of tissue donation is replete with exceptions. The area of reproductive donation is one in which monetised transactions are routine, often despite being regulated as gifts. In the paper I have pre-circulated, I present field work which investigates non-expert reasoning about the relationship between money, ethics and reproductive donation as an example of empirically informed ethical research.

Note: If you would like a copy of this paper, just send me an email (josef.holden@anu.edu.au).