Bring out yer dead, How much is a dead body worth? Options

[Fuchs]

Or simply adjust the prices for "used" organs downward.

[Kagetenshi]

But that makes no sense—the price for used organs is based, as I just said, on preexisting prices.

~J

[Fuchs]

Why would it not make any sense? With cheap cloning available, used organs (and all the immunosuppressing stuff one needs with them) need a boost, and making them dirt cheap would explain why someone even bothers with them.

[Kagetenshi]

The cloning costs, as they stand, aren't cheap. IIRC, a full limb is 25,000 nuyen--that's 5/4 what a top-paid Lone Star Enforcement Officer makes in a year!

The standard fencing rules are adequate for the cost reduction, or nearly so.

~J

[Fuchs]

And what does that officer's insurance cover?

[Kagetenshi]

On-duty medical issues only. While on duty they've got a DocWagon contract of a level that I don't remember, but if they get injured off-the-job it's out of their own pocket.

~J

[nezumi]

I have to amend my earlier statement...

I got my numbers initially from the table on page 128 (Body Part Types Table). What I didn't notice is it isn't labeled whether this is the cost for cloned parts (which would make sense, considering it has a 'base time to grow' or donated parts. The book offers no hint. However, M&M goes into more detail. We have three versions of transplant organs:

Generic donations - this is for 60% of the cost of what is listed on the table in SR3. Presumably my street doc would be doing this mostly, so that cuts significantly into his profit.

Type O parts - these parts undergo a medical profile to see if they match with the recipient. The book doesn't go into detail on how long this process takes or how common it is to find a Type O donor for a given recipient choosing from a given set of bodies, so we can only guess. It does say hospitals have an 'ample supply of generic parts in storage... In rare cases, a well-stocked hospital may have a Type O part on hand.' Presumably, this means that Type O organs are very unusual and therefore out of the reach of our street doc. If you're selling organs to the hospital, unless you already know it's a match, they'll sell as generic donations. This also shows me that a Type O donation costs as much as a cloned organ.

Cloned organs - we know this. Obviously, unless you run a cloning shop, you can't sell cloned organs. If you do have the cloned organs for a given recipient, they would sell as well or better than Type O parts. For everyone else they're generic parts.

This leads me to believe that generic parts have a pretty low cost in most areas. I imagine paying people for these is like paying people for scrap copper. They get the cost of gas plus a few hundred. Enough to scrape by, but not enough to really make a living.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

Another simple explanation for cheap bodies, expensive parts, could be wastage. Wastage can have a serious effect on the profit margins for any perishable good. I used to work in a factory that among other things, made those layered cream wafer biscuits. To cut down on the wastage of the off cuts from the biscuits (they're made in larger sheets and then cut into the required shapes), they begun grinding them into powder and putting it back into the cream as filler.

A Street Doc might buy say 5 corpses one week from some runners, because he needs fresh parts and body parts have a farily short shelf life, but he ends up scrapping them for ghoul chow because he had no buyers that week. The next week he buys another 5 corpses and somone DOES want that second hand leg, but now he not only needs to turn a profit on that limb, but cover the expenses of all the limbs he wasted. And he's still only selling the leg this week, the rest of the body is more wastage. And that's not taking into account diseased and sickly bodyparts from poor living conditions (helps deter people from killing junkies and other nobodies) or the wounds inflicted in killing the person.

This way, if you think 30% for standard fenceing rules is still too much, you can pretty much justify dropping it to whatever you like.

[Serial_Peacemake...]

Ah, stick and shock and a autodoc to keep them under. Then all the doc has to worry about is food. Not even tasty food.

[Thomas]