Legalization of Organ Sales: Ethical Implications and Limitations

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As the problem of organ shortage is getting more and more severe, how to increase the number of organ donors for transplantation has become an urgent problem faced by the government. Among all kinds of proposals, the legalization of organ sales gradually become a focus of many discussions. Both proponents like MacKay and opponents like S. M. Rothman and D. J. Rothman have supported their own opinions from several perspectives. However, no matter how the government makes its final decision, it should always consider the interest of everyone in the society and should not ignore the limitation of each solution. For legalized organ sales, the government should notice that it could be the trade only between a small portion of people and make it harder to wait for …show more content…

Even if organ sales were legalized, only a small group of poor people would actually sell their organs to make money. In MacKay’s essay, she regards poor people in third world countries as major resources for organ sales by stating there are poor people willing to do anything for money. Indeed, the natural desire of surviving would urge people to try every possibility to make money in order to maintain daily life and poor people are highly likely to be a major part of sellers. However, it does not necessarily mean poor people will really do everything as long as they could be compensated; every person has his or her bottom line for what they would do and what they would not do. Not all the poor would regard selling their organs as a proper way to make money. For example, S. M. Rothman and D. J. Rothman suggest in their article that as people in the modern society tend to have more acute sensibilities about the completeness of their bodies, organ sellers could suffer extreme shame in their community. For those poor who

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