Kidney sales: how far do sellers exercise reasoned freedom?

This paper explores kidney sellers’ perspectives and the process of decision-making in some villages of Bangladesh. We examine the organ sellers’ degree of freedom in relation to what they value to achieve, identify its limits, and see how those lead them to the choice of organ-selling. Selling decisions are made in a context where some people lack adequate material and social resources to secure a livelihood, face a never-ending quest for means to manage and transform their lives, and are enmeshed in constraining relationships within social and economic power systems. These conditions have contributed to the institutionalization of kidney-selling, a form of bodily self-exploitation, as a now routine practice amongst the poorest groups in some areas.
Consistent with most other findings, we find in these locations that while kidney sale is based on hope of resources to confront the precariousness of livelihoods, it is frequently experienced as a nightmare of life-long disaster, that consequently remains often mentally buried and/or untold.