1 This is the author's final version of a chapter that has been published by Oxford University Press in the book The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice, edited by Franklin Miller and Alan Wertheimer, published in 2009. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195335149.do CONSENT WITH INDUCEMENTS: the case of body parts and services Janet Radcliffe Richards Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Faculty of Philosophy University of Oxford 1. INTRODUCTION Some years ago, when news of kidney selling by live vendors first broke in the West, politicians from all points of the political compass rushed to declare it illegal, and medical organizations were equally quick to pronounce their professional anathema. The reaction was so immediate as to allow hardly any time for debate, but as challenges appeared to this first response justifications for prohibition of organ sales began to proliferate, and many of the arguments depended on claims about invalidity of consent. Analysis of these arguments can throw light on the matter of consent in general, as well as on the broader issue of payment for the use of bodies and body parts. Consent derives its importance from the fact that law and convention place a circle of presumptive inviolability around individuals. There is of course endless scope for difference of opinion about how wide and how impregnable that circle should be, and societies differ in their judgments about where the rights of the individual should end and where those of other individuals or the wider society should begin. In some societies many individuals may lack full rights even over such fundamental matters as bodily integrity (for instance, there may be no such thing as rape within marriage) while in others the range of individual rights stretches far beyond this. But wherever the boundary of individual control is established, consent is presumptively necessary for its transgression. And, specifically to the point here, it is also generally sufficient. Because the purpose of the boundary is to protect the bounded individual, the consent of that individual for any breach generally settles the matter of its acceptability. To whatever extent the law gives you a right to privacy within your own home, others may not intrude without your consent; but if you do consent, that provides exemption from whatever blame or penalties their intrusion would otherwise incur, and makes legitimate what would otherwise be an offence against you. There are, however, a few contexts where this prima facie sufficiency of consent seems to be regarded as breaking down. Even though some matter