Zell Kravinsky is an American investor, utilitarian, and poet. He earned himself two Ph.D.’s at the University of Philadelphia. He got his B.A. from Dartmouth College in Asian Studies and Indian Studies. After gaining a small fortune himself, he virtually gave it all away to various charities. He concentrated his work on public health organizations that ended up being $45 million.
After Kravinsky learned that many African-Americans have difficulty obtaining kidneys from family members, he sought out a hospital in Philadelphia that would allow him to donate one of his kidneys to a lower-income black person. Kravinsky justified the donation mathematically saying that the chances of dying as a result of the procedure would have been about 1 in 4,000. Kravinsky believed that, under the circumstances, "to withhold a kidney from someone who would otherwise die means valuing one’s own life at 4,000 times that of a stranger", a ratio he termed "obscene."