Why are organ sales illegal? Donors of blood, semen, and eggs are often compensated. Why not apply the same guide lines to organs? Joanna Mackay(2013) explains in her article Organ Sales Will Save Lives, “About 350,000 Americans suffer from end-stage renal disease.”(p. 120) At this stage of renal disease, the kidneys are no longer able to remove enough wastes and excess fluids from the body. Therefore, you would need dialysis or a kidney transplant. Dialysis is a very harsh procedure on the body and an expensive treatment. There are two possible types of dialysis. The first is hemodialysis, and the main advantage of hemodialysis is the minimized treatments, allowing the patient to be free of treatment four days a week. Each dialysis session …show more content…
usually lasts a duration of about four hours. Therefore, a patient would need to plan their life around these sessions. Most people on hemodialysis are unable to continue to work while receiving treatment. A person might end up feeling as if they're attached to the machine. Peritoneal dialysis differs from hemodialysis, a more commonly used blood-filtering procedure. With peritoneal dialysis, you can give yourself treatments at work, home or even while traveling. You may be able to use a small number of medications and eat a less restrictive diet than you can with hemodialysis. So most people would question why can’t a person just get peritoneal dialysis? It sounds a lot more appealing than hemodialysis. Well a patient must have the dexterity to set up the dialysis and also the ability to care for themselves. Some people, such as the elderly are not alert enough to do this procedure on their own or they can’t afford home health care to come in to assist them. Dialysis can also cause serious health implications such as anemia, bone disease, high blood pressure, heart disease, nerve damage and infection. A kidney transplant costs around $150,000 while dialysis annually costs around $80,000. This leaves the average American paying around $400,000 for a dialysis treatment of 5 years. How many people do we know that can afford this? Kidney transplants are the closest thing to a cure for a patient. As Gary S. Becker and Julio J. Elias(2014) explain in their Wall Street Journal article “For example, people ages 45 to 49 live on average, eight additional years if they remain on dialysis, but they live an additional 23 years if they get a kidney transplant. That is why in 2012, almost 4,500 people died while waiting for kidney transplants.” (p.3) A person’s body is able to function on one kidney. Therefore, this is why most kidney transplant candidates search their families hoping one of them is a suitable match. When there is no possible match’s a person is then placed on a donors list. The organs from the donors list come from deceased humans including dying of old age or in accidents. Receiving a kidney from a living donor can last over twice as long as one from a deceased person.
A transplanted kidney can last a person their whole lifetime yet in the greatest country of the world, the government bans the selling of organs. This leads to thousands of citizens desperate to find a cure for themselves or a loved one. A solution to reduce our supply and demand gap would be to pay our donors. By paying our donors, this would increase the supply of kidneys tremendously. People living in extreme poverty are willing to put so much on the line for money. People in third world countries are accepting as little as $1,000 for a kidney just so they can supply their family with some food and necessities. This black market of organ trading needs to be stopped but we should not ask a patient to accept death easily. If organ sales did become legalized it would need to be highly regulated. Some people in less fortunate countries are only left to sell their organs on the black market. Why not build a regulated system that compensates people fairly and provides them with safety? As unpleasant as it seems to commodify organs, the current situation is simply too tragic not to change something. If coordinated properly, it could simultaneously satisfy the needs of wealthy countries with long waiting lists and poorer countries with overwhelming poverty. In the 1990s, after years of war and economic slumps, the country, Iran decided to compensate donors by paying them for …show more content…
kidneys rather than incur the health-care expenses of treating people with kidney disease. Within a few years, the program eliminated the national waiting list for kidney transplants and these days, the black market is virtually nonexistent. It works in a process such as donors-to-be go to a regional office run by volunteers, receive medical testing, and then get matched with a potential beneficiary established upon their blood type. If further tests go well, the donation continues. The government deems any costs if a recipient cannot pay for their kidney, and most surgeries that take place in hospitals with university partnership. Conceivably, if such a program were bestowed more undoubtedly to the public, it’d be more extensively supported. The country already has a strong donor culture. Millions of Americans give blood every year and with the proper system, we can interlace our bodies, fairly and safely, in a way that might be able to save everyone involved. Within a decade, Iran was able to dissipate their waiting list for transplants and they are so far the only country in the world to succeed in completing this task. Regulation of organ sales would also make getting a transplant safe and sound. At this time, if something goes wrong after the procedure these people have no one to turn to and no direction to follow. I firmly believe these people feel as if they have no other choice but to turn to our black market. By having a kidney transplant surgery, no operation is risk-free. That’s why it is so important to make sure that you are fit and well beforehand so that the risks to you are as low as possible. Remarkably, many steps have been taken over the years to try to raise the supply of organs.
The first endeavor was from state laws allowing the use of organ donor cards or family consent to donate a deceased relative’s organs. Then, states began demanding hospitals to ask all patients’ families about organ donation. In recent times, state laws required hospitals to honor a patient’s donor card even when the family opposed donation. McKay(2013) also explains “those suffering from end-stage renal disease would do anything for the chance at a new kidney, take any risk or pay any price.”(p.123) By enforcing organ sales through a highly regulated system we as Americans can make huge strides as a country. We can save and impact so many lives by changing our organ sale
policy.
“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.
Richard A. Epstein’s “Thinking the Unthinkable: Organ Sales” (2005) is an argument trying to convince people that selling human organs is acceptable in order to increase the availability for those in need of an organ transplant. Epstein says money will motivate more people to donate their organs to those in need. He also looks at the argument from the point of the recipient of the organ and argues that the expense of buying an organ will not increase the price of getting an organ transplant.
The article has been well organized and written. Mackay clearly states her rationale for writing the article and provides a valid reason to hold up her article with sources. Within the introduction section, the authors present worrying statistics of Americans affected by kidney disorders. Moreover, the author provides the disadvantages of dialysis with only Kidney transplantation being the only option. The author relates the topic to the readers...
There are many arguments against it; organ sale is extremely dangerous, there will never be enough supply for the demand, whether legal or not, the black market will still exist, it is immoral, etc. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Radcliffe Richards, a philosopher, says “living organ donation is now so safe that many surgeons actively recommend it, and they would hardly do that if they expected a string of dead or damaged donors” (Wilkinson, 2011). As for the black market, “the best way of avoiding harm to organ vendors is not to criminalize and drive sale underground but rather to accept and regulate it” (Wilkinson, 2011). Prohibition is a good example of how the government banned alcohol and then realized that people were going to drink it anyway. Instead of pretending that it was not happening, prohibition was lifted and laws were put in place to regulate the sale and consumption. Although it will be a difficult process, the same can happen for organ
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
By selling organs via the black market deprives humanity of this amazing opportunity. Stealing individuals of the right to choose by causing one to become persuaded by just another dollar sign is morally and ethically. The effects of the exchange of money for bodily organs will not decrease one’s debt, most people who consider selling their organ is quickly selling for a quick fix. Some have sold their organs, to send their children to school, provide housing for their family and more but many have left unsatisfied. This gentleman from Bangladesh explains the harsh and brutal ways that individuals in the black market, are taking advantage of poor people, without knowledge of the effects of organ surgery. “I thought they would take my kidney, but they said they wanted to take part of my liver,” said Mehdi Hassan, a farmer from Bamongram village who underwent the operation in 2009. (O’Connor 2014) This individual stated that he did not even know what a liver was, but was still led to complete the surgery just for money to survive. As human citizens, we should be appalled by the fact that the cause of the selling of human organs is inhumane and more people need to be made aware of the effects that this is causing thousands and their families members. In the HBO show, “The tales of the organ trade,” the journalist interviews a whole family only to find out that each member except the children has
What if someone offered you $30,000 for your best kidney, would you take the money? You could profit $30,000 by not even doing anything but lying on a table to have your kidney extracted. It sounds like a good deal until you find out the surgery will be performed by an unlicensed surgeon, so the chance of your acquiring disease is high. Also, your risk of dying is heightened, do you take the chance? In discussions of black market organs, one hand would argue that the patient would get the organ in a timely manner without being waitlisted. On the other hand, people would argue about the state of the organ and the procedure being done by an unlicensed surgeon. No matter how desperate an individual may be to obtain an organ, it is better to receive an organ through a legal way to ensure safety.
Dialysis is only temporary. 2. Kidney transplantations could be a cure. They could be the answer for someone suffering.
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.
First of all, selling organs shouldn’t be legal for two main reasons, which are saving lives and stop people from selling organs illegally in the black market. The world should understand that in many cases if someone didn’t get the organ they need they will suffer and have to die in some cases. This doesn’t means that the donors will have to give up their lives but, they can and will live healthy. For example if someone is dyeing and in need of a kidney and there is no chance for that person to live unless he gets one. Legalizing selling organs will saves this person’s life because he would easily buy an organ and complete the rest of his life without and problems. But in the case of that kidney that is in need, other people could sell theirs without having and problems that would affect them. Humans have two kidneys and one kidney that wills saves other person live is going to kill this person or even hurts.
People die every day awaiting a kidney transplant. Many of these deaths will be avoided if organ donors were allowed to be paid. According to the article “"Cash for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs," the need for organs is great. "In 2012, 95,000 American men, women and children were on the waiting list for new kidneys, the most commonly transplanted organ" (Becker, Gary S. and Julio J. Elias 222). The need for organs far exceeds the number of people willing to donate an organ. Why can someone not pay people to donate one of their organs? Is it unethical to offer financial compensation for human organs?