This week’s Taboo & Repugnant Roundup spans human challenge trials, egg donation markets in the United States and Spain, sperm donor genetics, and kidney transplantation. At first glance, these stories seem quite different. Read together, they illuminate recurring questions about how law and institutions structure participation in high-stakes medical and reproductive settings.
Across research, reproduction, and transplantation, we see similar design choices at work: how consent is obtained, how screening is conducted, how compensation is framed, and how uncertainty is managed. Whether the context is a volunteer agreeing to participate in a challenge study, a donor navigating a fertility market, or a transplant system allocating scarce organs, the same tensions between individual choice and institutional responsibility repeatedly surface.
Rather than treating these cases as anomalies, this week’s roundup invites comparison—asking what we learn when we place them side by side, and what those comparisons reveal about governance at the boundaries of acceptable exchange.