Edit: I need to learn to summarisy my thoughts better. What I'm saying below and above is that the expected value of live kidney donation to society is misappli

Edit: I need to learn to summarisy my thoughts better. What I'm saying below and above is that the expected value of live kidney donation to society is misapplied to calculate the value of live kidney donation to the donor. We tacitly accept as a society that some people will die so that others may get a new kidney. That has nothing to do with the value that one person donating a kidney places over another person's health (and not life, because you're not "saving" lives). Although I understand your comment much better than the OP -4000 to 1, not 1/4000- those maths don't make any sense at all to me. First of all, nobody saves anyone by donating a kidney. You certainly don't "save" an entire person that way. You add some quality-adjusted years of life to their life expectancy, but that's all. And they're not that many, average is about 10. So at best you can say that each person donating a kidney is "helping" or "supporting" one other person. So it makes no sense to say that 3999/4000th of a person is "saved" or "helped" or whatever by one's _personal_ sacrifice. If I was the person dying while donating my kidney, my death would not equal 4000 people living, or living longer. It would mean my life ending for one person's life lasting a little while longer. One person! That's how many people are directly affected by one person's donation of a kidney. To claim that it's 4000 instead, is just sophistry with fractions. Or rather, it's an oversimplification because understanding the trade-off between one entire life and 10-ish quality adjusted years of life is too hard and does not easily support self-aggrandising statements. Look at it the other way: you won't let 4000 people die by refusing to donate a kidney. But this is more or less what is claimed in the two opinions above. Everydobdy who does not donate a kidney is an asshole who values their own life more than that of 4000 strangers.