In Chapter 4, we referred to the study The Price of Blood by M. H. Cooper and A. J. Culyer, commissioned by the Institute of Economic Affairs, a body whose research work is assisted by an advisory council of well-known economists.

The authors, applying ‘the simplest tools of economic analysis’ to the problems of blood supply and demand, came to the following conclusions: (i) that human blood is an economic good; (ii) that it is possible to attach precise economic meaning to the idea of wastage; (iii) that paying donors for blood would increase supply by encouraging more donors to come forward and by providing an incentive to paid donors to attend sessions more frequently; (iv) that, despite the absence of cost statistics, a commercial market in blood would, if demand continues to rise in the future, provide supplies at a definite cost advantage. In Chapter 9, we quoted from the preface by the editor in which it was said ‘The authors have made an unanswerable case for a trial period in which the voluntary donor is supplemented by the fee-paid donor so that the results can be judged in practice, and not pre-judged by doctrinaire obfuscation’.

In the Soviet Union, as we pointed out in Chapter 10, a similar crude utilitarianism prevails in the blood market although, unlike the United States, Japan and other countries, there are no ‘banks’ making a profit out of blood. Something like one-half of all blood supplies are bought and lavishly paid for in the Soviet Union. Those who have read and understood Marx's theory of commodity values and his justification of inequalities of reward (though not specifically in relation to human blood) should not be surprised. One of the fundamental omissions in his critique of capitalism was the absence of any formulation of a morality for socialist society The alternative to exploitation was, as Professor MacIntyre has said, ‘simply a crude utilitarianism’. Could we but change the prose style, revise the illustrations and omit any reference to Marx, such calculative (or ‘consumerism’) notions would no doubt appeal to the economists in the United States who support a private market in blood.