The Guide to Major Trusts 2025-26. DSC (Directory of Social Change)

The gift relationship: from human blood to social policy

Richard M. Titmuss’s The Gift Relationship has long been acknowledged as one of the classic texts on social policy.

Honoured by the New York Times as one of the ten most important books of the year when it first appeared in 1970, Titmuss’s The Gift Relationship is even more topical now in an age of AIDS and changing health care 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 non-market system based on altruism is more effective than one that treats human blood as another commodity.

This updated edition contains the original text along with new chapters that:

At a time when health and welfare systems are under sustained attack from many quarters, this new edition of The Gift Relationship is essential reading for everyone interested in social policy and the future of our society.

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