The behavior of people in the presence of scarce
resources has long been a source of ethical concern and
debate. Many of the responses, ranging from outright
brutality and cheating on the one hand to altruism,
nobility, and sacrifice on the other, were most recently
demonstrated in the movie Titanic. It should come
as no surprise, then, that rational efforts to allocate
the very scarce life-saving resource of organs are sometimes
circumvented by these natural human impulses and sheer
human creativity. This is especially true when the organs
in question are required for continued life and cannot
be temporarily or permanently replaced by technology. Thus
the focus of this paper will be on the competition for
livers.