Book dossier

Gift relationship

by Richard Morris Titmuss

While presenting a comparative study of blood donating in the United States and Britain, The Gift Relationship also 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. First released in 1970, The Gift Relationship is even more topical now in an age of AIDS and changing health care policy.