The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy - Hardcover

Titmuss, Richard Morris

3.59

29 ratings by Goodreads

9780394426303: The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394426304 ISBN 13: 9780394426303

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1971

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Richard M. Titmuss's The Gift Relationship has long been acknowledged as one of the classic texts on social policy. A seemingly straightforward comparative study of blood donating in the United States and Britain, the book elegantly raises profound economic, political, and philosophical questions. Titmuss contrasts the British system of reliance on voluntary donors to the American one in which the blood supply is largely in the hands of for-profit enterprises and shows how a nonmarket system based on altruism is more effective than one that treats human blood as another commodity.

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About the Author:

Richard M. Titmuss was a professor of social administration at the London School of Economics form 1950 until his death in 1973. He had an international reputation as an uncompromising analyst of contemporary social policy and as an expert on the welfare state. His previous books include Commitment to Welfare. The Gift Relationship was his last book.

John Ashton is a public health specialist and regional medical officer for the Northwest of England.

Review:

"A first-class study . . . moving from the relationship between blood donor and blood recipient to that between patient and physician, and thence to the very foundation of human societies." —The Washington Post

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