Legal Organ Market Argumentative Essay

Get Paid to Save a Life: The Legal Organ Market Consider this, a close friend or a relative is suffering from liver failure. They require a transplant but there is a shortage of donated organs and the waitlist is excruciatingly long. If the organ failure is life-threatening, they may consider acquiring an organ illegally from a questionable source or through transplant tourism. However, without the proper medical regulations, this is dangerous. A decision needs to be made on whether they take the risk, or not. For numerous patients currently waiting for organ transplants, this is their frightening reality. In response to the growing concern of the organ shortage, the controversial topic of a legal organ market has arisen. If improvements

With the proper regulations, a legal organ market could prove to be beneficial for patients, donors, and the economy. As Robyn S. Shapiro (2003), a lawyer who works primarily with medical cases, expressed “the strongest argument in favor of permitting the sale of human organs is that it would generate an increased supply of a scarce and lifesaving resource” (p. 19). At the same time, even if a legal organ market is not implemented and no other solutions are applied, illegal actions to obtain organs for life-threatening medical procedures and transplant tourism will still occur. For instance, “The United Network for Organ Sharing has estimated that each year, 200 to 300 Americas buy organs from the desperately poor in Third World countries” (as cited in Shapiro, 2003, p. 20). A legal organ market could decrease this illegal activity, provide financial stability, and address the limited supply of organs. For example, while making human organ sales legal could lead some volunteer organ donors to be reluctant to donate their organs without a price attached, a financial incentive could encourage more individuals to sell an organ. This would directly increase the supply and decrease illegal activity. However, if human organ sales should become legal, the process will require medical and financial

For instance, by implementing similar medical regulations and background checks from the current transplant process in an organ market, the medical risks decrease immensely. Additionally, while coercion and exploitation are viewed as major downfalls of legalizing organ markets, I. Glenn Cohen (2014), a Harvard Law professor, suggested that price floors and high fixed prices could address the problem of exploitation and prescreening sellers and contracts could lessen the possibility of coercion (p. 88). As for those who are worried that the market would only benefit the wealthy, a “response to this objection is that the government or a private organization under government regulation could purchase the organs and distribute them in a fair and equitable way – with no directed donations allowed” (Shapiro, 2003, p. 20). Furthermore, some other possible regulatory options to reduce the risks of a legal organ market include, controlling organ prices, limiting organ sales to certain types of compensation, regulating buyers and sellers, and determining which organs can be profitable (Cohen, 2014). With these types of regulations, voluntary donations are not undermined and are still possible and likely to