Because I think that many market arrangements are amoral, it is understandable that market transactions sometimes yield results that many consider absurd or even undesirable. Again, as a libertarian, my instrument of analysis is the degree to which those transactions were predicated on individual freedom for the parties. the area of bio-ethics is loaded with emotion and delicate sensibilities regarding how human beings may sell body parts or even price and transact on products that allow for conception of children.
Reading an article in NYT today, i was struck by how people assume that such transactions are free of trade-offs. Jacqueline Mroz writes about the call to regulate through limitation, the number of times that a single donor of sperm may b allowed to conceive babies. Starting with the fact that some concerned parents realized that the a number of donors have fathered a large number of children, they state that limits are demonstrably necessary in order to prevent the possibility of incest.
While I fully understand the concern that may emerge from in-breeding, I am not sure that this endeavor to limit donations is useful or intelligent. To start with, the real possibility of mutations arising from such relationships is undeclared and that is perhaps it is inestimably low. In addition, I am not sure that the reason that a small number of donors have such a high rate is possibly explained by the demand for specific characteristics that these individuals bear. Finally, there is always the possibility that the donated items may be exported across countries to ensure that the likelihood of mutations is reduced and diversity of genetic resources expanded. The approach being led by sledgehammer regulation is not as smart as imagined.
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