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. The black market is a development that provides services outside of the law. All trades are done without the government being involved, in outside government-sanctioned channels. This escapes the government price controls and taxes on the item. While this seems like a profitable agency, many problems lie within this system. By participating in the black market, everyone runs the risk of fraud. People don’t normally have direct contact with the buyer or seller; therefore, it’s common to receive a product with defaults. This can be especially harmful if we are talking about an organ. Few people wouldn’t hesitate to participate in the black market for products such as concert tickets or weapons due to efficiency and cost, but the question is if it is reliable with important merchandise like an organ. The World Health Organization estimates that, “one fifth of the 70,000 kidneys transplanted worldwide every year come from the black market.” Thi... ... middle of paper ... ...trieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>. Karen A. Hudson. "The Selling of Body Parts Does Not Benefit the Poor." At Issue: Is Selling Body Parts Ethical?. Ed. Christine Watkins. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Carthage Central High School Library. 5 May. 2014 Sam Vaknin. "The Sale of Body Parts Should Be Regulated." At Issue: Is Selling Body Parts Ethical?. Ed. Christina Fisanick. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Carthage Central High School Library. 5 May. 2014 .
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.
An example of someone who is in favor of selling organs would be a twenty one year old named Alexander Berger. Alexander Berger bravely decided to donate one of his organs, his kidney, to an individual he has never met before. While Alexander Berger went through this process, he claims that he spent a total of three days in the hospital and took a couple weeks off from his work to recover. This example of Alexander Berger is very essential to this topic because it gives the viewpoint of the donor and why this black market should be legal. Berger believes that an individual, specifically a donor, who has taken the time to go through this organ transplantation process should receive some sort of payment is necessary. Berger claims that the
The argument for organ donor system reform is compelling and strong. Satel supports her thoughts with facts and opinions from prominent authorities. As well as the argument is documented, there are a few weaknesses. While attempting to support her thoughts that having the body “for sale” would be socially acceptable, the author uses a source that could be seen as detrimental to her own argument. Stated in the text, “a recent poll by researchers in Pennsylvania found that 59 percent of respondents favored the general idea of incentives, with 53 percent ...
In the essay “Organ Sales Will Save Lives” by Joanna McKay, she uses claims, reasons, and evidence to support her idea that it should be legal to sell organs. One claims made by McKay is “Governments should not ban the sale of human organs; they should regulate it.” Ms. McKay feels strongly about the selling of organs being legalized, and she uses ample amounts of reasons and evidence to argue her claim. A reason McKay gives for legalizing organ sales is by legalizing the sale of organs, more people would be willing to part with an organ to save a stranger’s life. In her argument, she points out that legalizing organ sales would give more people the opportunity to have transplants to save their lives because more people would want to give up
Heathwood, C., 2012. A Reply to the Organ Harvest Argument. Philosophy 1100: Ethics, [Online]. 1, 5-11. Available at: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1100/lec11_againstAU.pdf [Accessed 22 May 2014].
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)
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
“Many people in our village have sold their kidneys if you are hungry, what do you do? You do whatever it takes to fulfill your hunger and that’s what I did.” Many people just like this young individual have volunteered to sell their organs for quick cash. To provide for their family, to send their children off to college, or to even put food on the table. For whatever the reason may be, there are still causes and the effects of selling one’s organ through the black market that one needs to be made aware of, for example, by selling one’s organ through the black market doesn’t ensure that one will be provided with the best medical care and attention that one will need prior to surgery,
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
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).
Obviously, people who are rich already have an easier time getting an organ transplant. The rich can more easily afford the costs; the poor will not have any more of a cost disadvantage than they already have. Epstein gives these reasons to support his idea that selling organs is not immoral. He does not accurately consider the immoral consequences of allowing organ sales by law. Compensating people for a good deed that is supposed to be selfless will completely change the nature of the action and the motivation behind it. Using money as motivation can be dangerous because of the manner in which harvesting the organ may occur and because of who may be reaping the benefit of the organ sale. Someone could use violence or could misuse their judgment to obtain the money from the organs of another person. Organs should only be allowed to be donated, not sold. Traditionally, donating organs is an act of giving in order to save someone else’s life; it allows a person to be a Good Samaritan. Willingly donating an organ keeps the focus on giving to others, instead of using a motivator that can corrupt, such as money.
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 ...
The State of the International Organ Trade. (2007, December). Retrieved April 24, 2011, from World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/8512/06-039370/en/#R43
Organ Sale is the exchange of human organs for money. This topic is very debatable because some people view organ sales as morally wrong mainly due to the view that only the wealthy will be able to afford the purchase of organs. In addition, many believe those living in poverty will be taken advantage of because they need the money. The selling of human organs can be beneficial to everybody and should be legal. By making organ sales legal it will give individual donors a better financial life, create a safer environment for those who sell their organs, make organ transplants available to more people and most importantly will save many lives.
... will check to avoid all the risks that might occur. And according to professor Nadey Hakim, he believes that there should be a market for the organs instead of the black market (Smith, 2011). This idea will be lowering the problems of the black market or might even destroy the black market. It will be saving many lives and people will know were to go to get an organ they need that is safe without any consequences.