Sally Satel’s argument in Death’s Waiting List, states that there is an extreme lack of organ donors in this society. “70,000 Americans are waiting for kidneys, according to The United Network for Organ Sharing” (132 Satel) and “only about 16,000 people received one last year. “ In big cities, where the ratio of acceptable organs to needy patients is worst, the wait is five to eight years and is expected to double by 2010 ” (132 Satel). There is no reason why the wait should be this long because any one can be an organ donor and Satel does a great job of explaining the benefits further in her essay. As a previous member of the waiting list, Sally Satel resorted to desperate measures when she considered going to the black market to obtain a kidney that she needed as well as trying a website called matchingdonors.com. She was lucky enough to find a match on the website, but unfortunately he fell through. As far as the black market goes, she thought it was too risky and unsafe even though she was in a life or death situation. This all could have been prevented if more people in our country were to consider themselves organ donors. If the black market isn’t safe for buying movies or getting music illegally, then it is definitely not safe for buying a kidney. This small statement in Satel’s essay provides a shocking emotional appeal to the readers. “Someone on the organ donor list dies every ninety seconds” (130 Satel) and the clock is ticking. Its unfortunate that only about 30-40% of Americans have put themselves down as donors on their driver’s licenses while the rest of the percentage is left up to their family members to make the decision. Satel’s believe is that relying on doing the right thing is not ... ... middle of paper ... ...or’s shoes and she did an excellent job of incorporating it without over-doing. I liked that she never lashed out at people that choose not to be organ donors, but instead made it clear that it would be an advantage to both the donor and recipient. She successfully gave counterarguments and was able to switch them around to something positive that helped her argument. I agree completely with Satel’s reasoning that giving incentives would increase the total amount of donors and I believe that those measures should be taken as soon as possible. Innocent lives are being lost everyday just because there are not enough people in the United States that put “organ donor” on their driver’s licenses. Those two, very simple words can mean the world to someone on the waiting list, and there is no reason why everyone shouldn’t be a donor, especially with financial incentives.
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.
Arguably, “Death’s waiting list” discusses a crucial topic of our times, regardless of how sincere Satel is in her argument, she does provide alternatives worth further analysis and consideration, after all, incentives are not that appalling to winning someone’s consent. Further research and public poles should be set up to take a deeper look into such alternative systems, yielding with insight to whether Satel’s suggestions potential in remedying this shortage of organs. While her argument might not be ideal, it does shed the light on this rising issue, and provides us with a place to start looking for solutions.
Critics of kidney sales argue that impoverished people are more likely to sell their organs than the rich. (Matas, 2004) They claim that the practice of kidney sales is injustice since vulnerable vendors are targeted and that they may suffer from lengthy health problems after the operations which may eventually lead to the loss of jobs. (Bramstedt, 2010)
However, it’s extremely important because organs from cadavers are often discarded if the family fails to make arrangements for them to be donated prior to the deceased being removed from life support. These situations significantly influence the fact that many Americans continually die every single day from not receiving a needed organ transplant. In fact, Sigrid Fry-Revere in her interview explains that 20 to 30 people die every day”. So exactly how should the American government address the organ donation shortage? The answer is quite simple: by compensating those who are willing to put the value of human life above all else. Compensation for organ donation is essential if the American Government wishes to increase the number of donors and significantly decrease the amount of Americans who are presently awaiting an organ transplant. Allowing compensation for organ donation will provide Americans with a stronger sense of protection, a clear expectation of moral behavior, and a stronger sense of American
... my journey researching organ transaction I have a whole new look on the matter. For one with the increasing number of people that have organ failure there is a decreasing number of donors. People will go to great lengths to insure their health by traveling to different country’s or buying form an illegal market for the organ they need because there are insufficient number of organs in the States. Also I know there can be a market for organs if we would just look past all the greed and see how many people are dieing each day from organ failure. Last but not least is the very epicenter of the whole problem, doctors and insurance companies are holding us down from a market of legal organ trade just so the can get an extra buck. Without a doubt my opinion of legalizing organ trade has grown stronger and someday I hope the Government sees it the same way I do some day.
Justin, a South Carolina college student, died at the age of 23 while on the waiting list for a lung transplant. When Justin was three months old he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a disease which affects the lungs. Throughout his childhood he coped with his illness but at the age of 20 his health took a turn for the worst. Justin was on the waiting list for two years but no lungs came available in time. Organ allocation in the United States of America has become a heavily debated subject in the medical field as well as the political and ethical fields. There is no doubt that there is a shortage of organs in the United States. In order to increase organ supply the American Department of Health should integrate the effective allocation policies of some European countries such as Spain and Austria. These policies include: who receives organs, an opt-out program, and de-regionalized donations.
...e identifies the need for improvement not in the distribution of the organs available for transplant, but in the education of policy and regulating agencies on diversity, multiculturalism and ethics that need to be applied prior to approaching the general public and asking them to become organ donors for the good of everyone.
“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
It is clear that a large demand for organs exists. People in need of organ donations are transferred to an orderly list. Ordinarily, U.S. institutions have an unprofitable system which provides organs through a list of individuals with the highest needs; however, these organs may never come. A list is
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
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.
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.
One of the most important and prevalent issues in healthcare discussed nowadays is the concern of the organ donation shortage. As the topic of organ donation shortages continues to be a growing problem, the government and many hospitals are also increasingly trying to find ways to improve the number of organ donations. In the United States alone, at least 6000 patients die each year while on waiting lists for new organs (Petersen & Lippert-Rasmussen, 2011). Although thousands of transplant candidates die from end-stage diseases of vital organs while waiting for a suitable organ, only a fraction of eligible organ donors actually donate. Hence, the stark discrepancy in transplantable organ supply and demand is one of the reasons that exacerbate this organ donation shortage (Parker, Winslade, & Paine, 2002). In the past, many people sought the supply of transplantable organs from cadaver donors. However, when many ethical issues arose about how to determine whether someone is truly dead by either cardiopulmonary or neurological conditions (Tong, 2007), many healthcare professionals and transplant candidates switched their focus on obtaining transplantable organs from living donors instead. As a result, in 2001, the number of living donors surpassed the number of cadaver donors for the first time (Tong, 2007).
The Importance of Organ Donation Each day approximately 6,300 people die and what makes this haunting is that presently there are 83,513 people waiting for organs to be donated, yet each day 17 people die because they do not receive a transplant (http://www.donatelife.net/facts_stats.html). These statistics show that people who are waiting for organ transplants have a good chance at being saved and get what they need. The sad truth is though, because of the lack of people willing to donate organs, many people will continue to wait for organs to save their lives. ? Waiting lists of patients for organ transplants become longer as the need for transplantable organs increases? (Sheehy 1).
Sadly this is not the case Problems incurred linked to Organ Donation. ------------------------------------------- Sheer lack of donor organs Ladies and gentlemen, the facts speak for themselves.