The Rise of Black Market Organ Sales There is an illegal market taking advantage of people all over the world, becoming not only a national issue, but an international one. It is the black market for the sale of human organs. The need for organ donations far outweighs the supply from donors and it is estimated that each day 18 people die waiting for an organ transplant in the United States (Beshears, 2014). However, the dilemma is that there is not enough supply to meet the demand and it has become an international problem that has risen from the amount of people awaiting a life-saving organ transplant. The rise of organ sales on the black market is caused by an inadequate supply of organs donated, the inability to provide incentives for organ …show more content…
The demand is high and this is why a black market exists. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the national organ donation waiting list has over 100,000 patients on it and around 2000 people are added to the list monthly (DHHS, 2016). Black market brokers and the medical personnel involved in the transplants make a lot of money, but there have also been reports of human trafficking to harvest organs from unwilling people in countries like Mexico (Beshears, 2014). The World Wide Web is a crucial motivator when it comes to the success of the black market. Side stepping the transplant waiting list by using the Internet encourages bias (Kalogjera, 2009). There are health concerns when people ignore the law and use illegal ways of obtaining an organ. How can someone know the kidney they are receiving is healthy? It is the risk people take when using the black market to buy an organ. Some may say that using the Internet in this manner allows them to use their body as they see fit and also increases the amount of organs available to waiting recipients (Kalogjera, …show more content…
This is something they can do because they have the organs that others need. This may be an easy way to make money for the poor and therefore easy money to spend for the rich. There have been instances where someone in need of an organ, like a kidney, will bypass the transplant waiting list to advertise on the internet- kidneymatch.com or even billboards to seek donors. A Texas man did just that. Advertised for a donor kidney and paid the donor for airfare, hotel stays, and lost wages (The Hastings Center Report, 2005). The poor are exploited simply because they can be paid much less due to needing any amount of money. They will accept anything because it will help their financial situation. An idea to safeguard against exploiting the poor population is to allow non-monetary incentives like free healthcare for a donor, rather than cash (Shetty, 2013).
People tend to focus on the sale of a kidney because people can live with only one and make a profit from selling the other. Mostly taking place in countries other than the United States, poor people are encouraged and sometimes forced to sell a kidney to the wealthy (Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, 2015). Some say the poor will always be persuaded to sell their organs which will continue to entice the wealthy (Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection,
“Organ Sales Will Save Lives” by Joanna MacKay be an essay that started with a scenario that there are people who died just to buy a kidney, also, thousands of people are dying to sell a kidney. The author stood on her point that governments should therefore stop banning the sale of human organs, she further suggests that it should be regulated. She clearly points that life should be saved and not wasted. Dialysis in no way could possibly heal or make the patient well. Aside from its harshness and being expensive, it could also add stress to the patient. Kidney transplant procedure is the safest way to give hope to this hopelessness. By the improved and reliable machines, transplants can be safe—keeping away from complications. Regulating
Joanna MacKay says in her essay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives, that “Lives should not be wasted; they should be saved.” Many people probably never think about donating organs, other than filling out the paperwork for their drivers’ license. A reasonable amount of people check ‘yes’ to donate what’s left of their bodies so others may benefit from it or even be able to save a life. On the other hand, what about selling an organ instead of donating one? In MacKay’s essay, she goes more in depth about selling organs.
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
Obviously, people who are rich already have an easier time getting an organ transplant. The rich can more easily afford the costs; the poor will not have any more of a cost disadvantage than they already have. Epstein gives these reasons to support his idea that selling organs is not immoral. He does not accurately consider the immoral consequences of allowing organ sales by law. Compensating people for a good deed that is supposed to be selfless will completely change the nature of the action and the motivation behind it. Using money as motivation can be dangerous because of the manner in which harvesting the organ may occur and because of who may be reaping the benefit of the organ sale. Someone could use violence or could misuse their judgment to obtain the money from the organs of another person. Organs should only be allowed to be donated, not sold. Traditionally, donating organs is an act of giving in order to save someone else’s life; it allows a person to be a Good Samaritan. Willingly donating an organ keeps the focus on giving to others, instead of using a motivator that can corrupt, such as money.
Death is an unavoidable factor in life. We are all expected to die, but for some of the people the end does not have to come too soon. Joanna MacKay in her article Organ Sales Will Save discuss how the legalization of the organs sale, possesses the capability of saving thousands of lives. MacKay in her thesis stipulates that the government should not ban the human organs sale rather they should regulate it (MacKay, 2004). The thesis statement has been supported by various assertions with the major one being that it shall save lives. The author argues that with the legalized sale of organs, more people would be eager to donate their kidneys.
In 1954, the first organ transplant was conducted successfully in the United States. (Clemmons, 2009) Nowadays, the technology of organ transplant has greatly advanced and operations are carried out every day around the world. According to current system, organ sales are strictly prohibited in the United States. (Clemmons, 2009) However, the donor waiting list in the United States has doubled in the last decade and the average waiting time for a kidney is also increasing. (Clemmons, 2009) In the year 2007, over 70,000 patients were on the waiting list for a kidney and nearly 4500 of them died during the waiting period. In contrast to the increasing demand for kidney, organ donation has been in a decrease. (Wolfe, Merion, Roys, & Port, 2009) Even the government puts in great effot to increase donation incentives, the gap between supply and demand of organs still widens. In addition, the technology of therapeutic cloning is still not mature and many obstacles are met by scientists. (Clemmons, 2009) Hence, it is clear that a government regulated kidney market with clear legislation and quality control is the best solution to solve the kidney shortage problem since it improves the lives of both vendors and patients.
Imagine being a hospitalized patient waiting for an organ donation to save your life, knowing that the amount of people in need of organs outweigh the amount of donors. This is a sad reality for many people across the United States due to the lack of available organs. The debate over monetary payment to donors to increase available organs has been an ongoing fight for over 30 years. In 1984 an act was passed to put tight restrictions on organ sales through Task Force on Organ Procurement and Transplantation, which resulted in a depleted amount of available organs. This act that changed the organ sales industry was called the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). NOTA was originally created to stop exploitative and illegal sales between donors and patients, but turned into a method of decreasing organ availability for patients around the world. I explored two articles over the complications of organ sale legality to discover if the monetary payment of organs should be outlawed. The first article focuses on the different market factors that affect the public opinion and the second explores the financial incentive declined caused by organ donations.
It’s important to realize that many Americans believe organ donation should simply be just that, a donation to someone in need. However, with the working class making up roughly 60% of society it’s extremely unlikely that a citizen could financially support themselves during and after aiding someone in a lifesaving organ transplant. The alarming consequence, says bioethicist Sigrid Fry-Revere, is that people waiting for kidneys account for 84 percent of the waiting list. To put it another way Tabarrok explains, “In the U.S. alone 83,000 people wait on the official kidney-transplant list. But just 16,500 people received a kidney transplant in 2008, while almost 5,000 died waiting for one” (607). Those numbers are astronomical. When the current “opt-in” policy is failing to solve the organ shortage, there is no reason compensation should be frowned upon. By shifting society’s current definition regarding the morality of organ donation, society will no longer see compensation for organs as distasteful. Citizens will not have to live in fear of their friends and family dying awaiting an organ transplant procedure. A policy implementing compensation would result in the ability for individuals to approach the issue with the mindset that they are helping others and themselves. The government currently regulates a variety of programs that are meant to keep equality and fairness across the
Organ donations are crucial for people in emergency situations. For years organ donations have saved the lives of millions. The problem with people needing organs is that there are not enough organs to be supplied to everyone who needs it. There are many people who die because they are not able to obtain lifesaving organs. The need for organs exceeds the supply given. Thus, leading me to ask this essential question, “Should organ donation be a part of the market?” To support this question I have prepared three supportive claims, but since my answer is no my reasons will revolve around this argument. First, I will state why I do not agree with such a thing, and then I will support my claim by stating why it is so bad, and to end my paper I will state what place(s) legalizes trade.
Rachael Rettner comments “One of the biggest fears with introducing financial incentives is that it might lead to an organ market and create a situation in which the rich could exploit the poor for organs.” Delmonico shares that “Once you insert monetary gain into the equation of organ donation, now you have a market. Once you have a market, markets are not controllable, markets are not something you can regulate. The problem with markets is that rich people would descend upon poor people to buy their organs, and the poor don’t have any choice about it.” However, if we make it so that it is regulated and insurance pays for organs it will not matter how rich or poor you are it will only matter about the person 's health and who needs the organ the most. People may see it has morally wrong. That the human body should not be sold and traded for money. That an individual 's body should be protected. However, it is also thought that it is an individual 's body and they should be able to do what they want with it. Overall, it will be better to save lives of thousands of people.
Despite an increased rate in organ transplantation from living donors, the supply and demand of recipients and donors still has not met. In an effort to further encourage and increase the number of organs available for transplant by living donors, the contemplation of an organ market has been brought up into attention (Tong, 2007). While the idea of an organ market system would theoretically improve the number of living organ ...
In the United States, there are over one hundred thousand people on the waiting list to receive a life-saving organ donation, yet only one out of four will ever receive that precious gift (Statistics & Facts, n.d.). The demand for organ donation has consistently exceeded supply, and the gap between the number of recipients on the waiting list and the number of donors has increased by 110% in the last ten years (O'Reilly, 2009). As a result, some propose radical new ideas to meet these demands, including the selling of human organs. Financial compensation for organs, which is illegal in the United States, is considered repugnant to many. The solution to this ethical dilemma isn’t found in a wallet; there are other alternatives available to increase the number of donated organs which would be morally and ethically acceptable.
... will check to avoid all the risks that might occur. And according to professor Nadey Hakim, he believes that there should be a market for the organs instead of the black market (Smith, 2011). This idea will be lowering the problems of the black market or might even destroy the black market. It will be saving many lives and people will know were to go to get an organ they need that is safe without any consequences.
People consider trafficking to be only in the form of sex, but trafficking actually has many different categories. Human trafficking is defined as people who sell or trade their bodies, or other people’s bodies for different purposes like, forced labor, sex, forced marriage, and even organs. Trafficking of any kind is considered a crime in the United States and every other country in the world except Iran because it is a violation of human rights. Although trafficking is illegal, it still takes place all over the world and statistics say that trafficking brings in approximately 32 billion dollars of international trade per year. Out of all the different forms of trafficking, organ trafficking is the most dangerous. The compensation of organ donors was legal until 1984 when the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 was put into place. Many people turn to buying organs because there is a shortage of organs and some patients may be on the organ transplant list for years. Because there is such a shortage of available organs for transplantation, many people turn to buying or selling organs on the black market illegally. If trafficking was legalized with regulations, there would rarely be a need to use the black market. Even though the 32 billion dollars that the black market makes each year would rapidly diminish, the money would be spent in other places, and legally. Many people argue that a human life should be invaluable but by legalizing the trafficking of organs, the list for organ transplants would slowly disappear. If the sale of organs was legal with heavy regulations, many more organs would be donated; therefore, many more lives would be saved all over the world.
Put yourself in one of the over 100,000 people that is waiting for a kidney. Now place yourself near the bottom of the list, while your dialysis is dwindling in effectiveness. Now as your laying in the hospital you have the funds to purchase a kidney, and know that there are many people who are in desperate need for money. Yet, our laws currently prevent the sales of kidneys, and thus, you will be allowed to lay in your hospital bed until you die, while there are safe preventative measures to save your life.