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In the case study Blood for Sale, Sol Levin, the founder of Plasma International, is seen participating in a highly controversial act: buying and selling blood for profit. In this paper, I will show the advantages and cons of taking part in commercial transactions in blood from the egoistic, the utilitarian, and the Kantian perspectives as well as my stand on the company’s actions.
Below are the facts that that were involved in the case:
• Plasma International is a company that focuses on obtaining and selling blood for revenue and was founded by Sol Levin, a successful stockbroker.
• In the beginning, Plasma International bought most of their blood from people who were addicted to drugs and alcohol.
• Plasma International found better supply
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The fact that Sol and his colleagues were willing to take the blood from drug and alcohol addicts and resell it shows the risks they were willing to take in order to accrue revenue. It was soon after that people who received the blood were diagnosed with hepatitis. It was then that Plasma International wanted to look for other sources of safe and uncontaminated blood. Turning to West Africa, Plasma International knowingly bought pints of blood from West Africans with the intention of selling it approximately 166 times more than what they bought it for. Some may view this differently, but I personally believe that it was a wrong and shameful …show more content…
When it comes to the Kantian theory, Kant felt that that nothing is good in itself except “good will”. Will is the uniquely human capacity to be motivated by reasons, maxims, or principles. “Good will” is a will that is motivated to perform an act because it is a moral duty and not merely because the act is in one’s self-interest. In the case of Plasma International, all the acts that were made would be in violation with Kant’s theory. Many would see this and say that it is a great thing because the company is getting blood and giving it to people who many need it. But, Kant says that if an act is being done because of something other than moral duty, it is considered wrong and meaningless. In the case of Plasma International, it was the fact that the company was founded with the intention of selling blood for profit as opposed to giving blood to people who need it without a
Through the entire essay she gives reasons and counterarguments of selling organs. At the very beginning of the paper, she clearly states her outlook, which is “Governments should not ban the sales o...
Most people live in capitalist societies where money matters a lot. Essentially, ownership is also of significance since it decides to whom the money goes. In present days, human tissues matter in the scientific field. Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, shows how Henrietta Lacks’s cells have been used well, and at the same time, how they have been a hot potato in science because of the problem of the ownership. This engages readers to try to answer the question, “Should legal ownership have to be given to people?” For that answer, yes. People should be given the rights to ownership over their tissues for patients to decide if they are willing to donate their tissues or not. Reasons will be explained as follows.
Gregory exposes and informs the audience that there are thousands of people that are dying and suffering as a result of not being able to receive transplants. Persuasively, Gregory is pushing and convincing readers to open their eyes and agree that there should be a legal market in organ selling and that people should be compensated for their donation. The author approaches counterarguments such as the market will not be fair and the differences between a liberalist’s and conservative’s views on organ selling. Liberal claims like “my body, my choice” and the Conservative view of favoring free markets are what is causing controversy to occur. Gregory suggests that these studies “show that this has become a matter of life and death” (p 452, para 12). Overall, Anthony Gregory makes great claims and is successful in defending them. He concludes with “Once again, humanitarianism is best served by the respect for civil liberty, and yet we are deprived both… just to maintain the pretense of state-enforced propriety” (p 453, para 15). In summary, people are deprived of both humanitarianism and civil liberty all because of the false claim of state-enforced behaviors considered to be appropriate or correct. As a result, lives are lost and human welfare is at
Imagine being told that your kidney does not function anymore, and having to wait an average of ten years of waiting for a transplant, and yet being afraid of dealing with the black market for a new organ. Joanna Mackay believes that these lives lost every day can be saved, as said in her essay “Organs Sales Will Save Lives”. MacKay’s purpose is to decriminalize organs sales. The rhetorical strategies used by MacKay are ethos, logos and pathos. These 3 strategies are used to persuade the audience of the benefits that may come to both the donor and the patient if decriminalized.
Plasma is one of the three components of blood and contains all the clotting factors found in blood. From the plasma many different products are manufactured, these are fresh frozen plasma or when the plasma is split into its different components. Plasma is obtained from voluntary donors who donate just plasma via an apheresis machine or they donate whole blood which then gets centrifuged to separate the plasma from the rest of the blood.
On the 1950’s, the above statement drove the medical field insane, many doctors used to forced blood transfusion on Jehovah’s Witness and other doctors refused to provide treatment to those who refuse blood transfusion; even in a life threatening situation. For some time, doctors were put on a bad position, they faced a dilemma when caring for a Jehovah’s Witness patient because if a patient (Jehovah’s Witness) was not treated promptly must likely he/she would die, but if they were threated against his or her wishes with blood transfusions, the doctor was charged with “Assault”. As the time went-on, the blood transfusion topic became more controversial, mainly due to the increase number on cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) acquired when used contaminated blood. The Scientifics, along with the medical field were forced to work together with Jehovah’s Witness in order to develo...
Harmening, D. M. (2005). Modern Blood Banking & Transfusion Practices. Philidelphia, PA: F.A. Davis Company.
Taylor, J. S. (2009). Autonomy and organ sales, revisited. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 34, 632-648.
Blood transfusions and ingesting blood is prohibited and considered wrong. Bone marrow are left to the individual and his principles to decide; other types of medical treatment are permitted. (Beliefnet, 2014). Jehovah’s Witnesses do not allow blood transfusions base...
Kant conveys his beliefs by introducing the idea of a moral law. He believes there is a moral law that is to be upheld by everyone. The moral law is an unconditional principle that defines the standards of right action. Good will is a form of moral law because it’s a genuine attitude behind an action. Anything that is naturally good is morally good which sums up to be good will. Actions of good will do the right thing for the reason of simply being the right thing to do. There is no qualification, benefactor or incentive its good will and no personal gain, inclination, or happine...
Although blood transfusions had been used before the First World War, many were not successful due to lack of knowledge in this type of treatments. World War I pushed the development of blood transfusions, allowing them to be safer. Before the war in the 17th century, blood transfusions often occurred with the use of animal blood, a practice that did not achieve desired results. These transfusions often times came from sheep, and although they were sometimes successful, it was discovered that any large amounts of transfusions would cause death. Coming to the conclusion that animal blood transfusions did not save lives, scientists looked to humans for human to human transfusions. Many of these attempted transfusions were met with failure but in 1818, Dr. James Blundell accomplished the first successful human blood transfusion; four ounces of blood were transferred to the patient from her husband. From that moment on, doctors began to learn even more about blood transfusions and how to do them properly. By 1901, the four human blood groups were discovered by Karl Landsteiner; with less differences in the bloods transfused together, coagulation and clumping amounts decreased. This benefited many lives in that toxic reactions to the wrong types of blood did not occu...
Throughout history physicians have faced numerous ethical dilemmas and as medical knowledge and technology have increased so has the number of these dilemmas. Organ transplants are a subject that many individuals do not think about until they or a family member face the possibility of requiring one. Within clinical ethics the subject of organ transplants and the extent to which an individual should go to obtain one remains highly contentious. Should individuals be allowed to advertise or pay for organs? Society today allows those who can afford to pay for services the ability to obtain whatever they need or want while those who cannot afford to pay do without. By allowing individuals to shop for organs the medical profession’s ethical belief in equal medical care for every individual regardless of their ability to pay for the service is severely violated (Caplan, 2004).
Kantianism, which is derived from the moral philosopher Immanuel Kant, states that the only thing that is truly good is a good will. A good will is one that acts because of its duty. Kantians asks two main questions. The first question is, “What is unconditionally good?”. When answering this question, Kantians weed out all other possible answers. In his book, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant states that, “Understanding, wit, judgment1 and the like, whatever such talents of mind' may be called, or courage, resolution, and perseverance in one's plans, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable for many purposes, I but they can also be extremely evil and harmful if the will which is to make use of these gifts of nature, and whose distinctive constitution" is therefore called character, is not good (Kant, p 7).” For example, power is not unconditionally good because you can abuse it. Also, money cannot be unconditionally good because you can buy bad things with it. Happiness is not unconditionally good because bad things can make you happy. The only thing that is unconditionally good is a good ...
By donating blood to insure there is enough in supply, the life we save may be our own.
In conclusion, although there are some valid reasons to support the creation of an organ market based on the principles of beneficence and autonomy, there are also many overriding reasons against the market. Allowing the existence of organ markets would theoretically increase the number of organ transplants by living donors, but the negative results that these organ markets will have on society are too grave. Thus, the usage of justice and nonmaleficence as guiding ethical principles precisely restricts the creation of the organ market as an ethical system.