Ethics and the Commercialization of Organ Transplants

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Recommended: Moral issues surrounding organ donation

Commercialization of organ transplants has remained a highly debated issue and has been being considered unethical mostly. Mostly points have been raised by scholars and researchers against it. People have generally opposed the idea of sales of human organs like spare parts. However, it is also essential to check the other side of the same issue. The availability of organs required for transplantation has generally remained low and many deaths have also been caused due to unavailability of organs at the time they are needed. There are two aspects of this debate. The first aspect is that if people have the right to sell their own body parts. The second aspect is will not it give rise to illegal sales of organs since every second we know in various parts of the world people are waiting for organ transplants. Keeping these points in view it gets difficult to reach a conclusion if commercialization of organ transplant can be considered ethical.

Seeing the wide gap that exists between the availability and the need of organs for transplant, it really seems essential to facilitate sales of organs to meet the demand and to save lives. Consented organ donations till now in our society have remained limited and not all people agree to it. Seeing the demand for cadaveric organs for transplantation, it does not appear possible that the current voluntary opt in system will be able to match the demand. The number of potential donors is high. But despite that only 15% of organs from potential donors are being transplanted. There are both psychological and cultural reasons behind it. (Dougherty, 1986) People generally are unable to decide whether they should donate their organs after death or rather their bodies should be buried without any sur...

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...us make the people who are in need of organs really happy. So, in order to save many lives this line can be pursued to a certain extent with appropriate regulations in place. Of all the normative ethics this decision is supported the best by utilitarianism which links actions’ ethicality to the degree of happiness they promote. However, this decision is also supported by Ethics of care which emphasizes on interdependence and relationships to achieve ethical goals.

References

Dougherty, C. J. (1986). A Proposal For Ethical Organ Donation. In Health Affairs.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/5/3/105.full.pdf

Thomas, C. M. (2001). COMMERCIALISATION OF THE SUPPLY OF ORGANS FOR TRANSPLANTATION. In Massey University

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Colleges/College%20of%20Business/School%20of%20Accountancy/Documents/Discussion%20Papers/207.pdf

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