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Ethical issues with organ donations
Health policy and organ donation and ethical issues
Ethical issues with organ donations
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Position Paper By Medina Gregory November 15, 2015 University of Maryland College Bioethics Introduction The following position paper will recognize the ethical issues dealing with selling organs. In addition, it will explain the topics, why selling organs is controversial, the pros and cons of selling organs, as well as communicate why this issues can benefit everybody involved with this ethical issue. Controversy Selling organ parts brings up a lot of controversy. For instance, killing unborn babies and harvesting their human body parts is legal, but selling your own body parts is illegal? More people would be willing to supply an organ if they could get a profit out of it. People also seem to wonder, why should …show more content…
Don’t business do that everyday? Preventing people from selling their organs, kill the people need an organ today. Why shouldn’t the people on the transplant list benefit from people selling their organs? Different organizations such as: charities, religious organizations, and the government could provide it for them. (My Body, My Organs: If Planned Parenthood Can Sell Body Parts, Why Can’t I?, n.d.). Why shouldn’t America bring this business to …show more content…
Dialysis cost more than transplantation, and transplantation would keep more people alive, and would help the economy. People who are not as wealthy would receive compensation for selling their organs. This would help decrease the amount of poverty in certain areas, as well as the financial stability of many. (Should the Selling of Organs be Legal?, n.d.). Another pro would be that people would have to deal with lesser pain, because they would receive the organ faster. In addition, there would be no point of having a black market for organs if it becomes legal, so that would decrease as well. Most importantly the patient would become healthy, and the patient would be able to have the option of knowing whom the organ came from. (Should the Selling of Organs be Legal?,
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.
According to Pozgar (2016), the demand for organs and tissues for use in transplantation far exceeds the available supply. This is largely due to the increasing success rate of organ transplantation. This disparity between the supply and demand for viable organs has created an ethical dilemma. Since, there are not enough organs to help everyone, it must be decided who will, in effect, live or die. Those charged with making those decisions attempt to use a set of guidelines to determine who the beneficiaries will be. However, when a decision results in the suffering and/or death of another, there are going to be ethical questions.
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
When viewing organ donation from a moral standpoint we come across many different views depending on the ethical theory. The controversy lies between what is the underlying value and what act is right or wrong. Deciding what is best for both parties and acting out of virtue and not selfishness is another debatable belief. Viewing Kant and Utilitarianism theories we can determine what they would have thought on organ donation. Although it seems judicious, there are professionals who seek the attention to be famous and the first to accomplish something. Although we are responsible for ourselves and our children, the motives of a professional can seem genuine when we are in desperate times which in fact are the opposite. When faced with a decision about our or our children’s life and well being we may be a little naïve. The decisions the patients who were essentially guinea pigs for the first transplants and organ donation saw no other options since they were dying anyways. Although these doctors saw this as an opportunity to be the first one to do this and be famous they also helped further our medical technology. The debate is if they did it with all good ethical reasoning. Of course they had to do it on someone and preying upon the sick and dying was their only choice. Therefore we are responsible for our own health but when it is compromised the decisions we make can also be compromised.
...nts will die before a suitable organ becomes available. Numerous others will experience declining health, reduced quality of life, job loss, lower incomes, and depression while waiting, sometimes years, for the needed organs. And still other patients will never be placed on official waiting lists under the existing shortage conditions, because physical or behavioral traits make them relatively poor candidates for transplantation. Were it not for the shortage, however, many of these patients would be considered acceptable candidates for transplantation. The ban of organ trade is a failed policy costing thousands of lives each year in addition to unnecessary suffering and financial loss. Overall, there are more advantages than disadvantages to legalizing the sale of organs. The lives that would be saved by legalizing the sale of organs outweighs any of the negatives.
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).
Today, 120,000 people are waiting for organ transplants in the United States. On average eighteen of these people die every day because they did not get the organ donation because of an absence of available organs for transplant. There is a large and increasing shortage of organs for transplant patients not only in America but in the whole world. Currently, the only organs that a transplant patient can legally receive are from cadavers or living relatives. This leaves patients with a very small chance of getting the help they need if they do not have a living relative with a compatible organ. If there were a free market for organs, it is believed by many experts that up to half of these patients would be able to get the transplants they need, at a lower medical cost (Adams, Barnett, Kaserman). The heightened medical costs, anguish of waiting, and thousands of needlessly lost lives could all be remedied by a free market for human organs.
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.
For starters I would like to high light that I do not agree with organ trade, I absolutely detest it. To save a life by giving an organ is a good thing but selling it develops problems. Selling organs is very immoral because it allows our vital organs to be sold like a piece of crap. I do not see how legalization is okay, because no one should want to have their body part(s) sold on the market as though they are an item. However, I do support giving organs for great causes and maybe, giving it to science. Those are fairly acceptable things and they can become beneficial to science and people in need. In recent studies I found that “People who sell their kidneys receive a small amount for their donation, after all the majority goes to whomever is the broker i...
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.
Organ transplantation is apperceived as one of the most prehending achievements for preserving life in medical history. This procedure provides a means of giving life to patience’s who suffer from terminal organ failure, which requires the participation of individuals; living or deceased, to donate their organs for the more preponderant good of society.
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.
In conclusion, although there are some valid reasons to support the creation of an organ market based on the principles of beneficence and autonomy, there are also many overriding reasons against the market. Allowing the existence of organ markets would theoretically increase the number of organ transplants by living donors, but the negative results that these organ markets will have on society are too grave. Thus, the usage of justice and nonmaleficence as guiding ethical principles precisely restricts the creation of the organ market as an ethical system.
In this paper I will be using the normative theory of utilitarianism as the best defensible approach to increase organ donations. Utilitarianism is a theory that seeks to increase the greatest good for the greatest amount of people (Pense2007, 61). The utilitarian theory is the best approach because it maximizes adult organ donations (which are the greater good) so that the number of lives saved would increase along with the quality of life, and also saves money and time.
Selling organs will saves lives in many different ways also. People are dying because they are illegally selling their organs in the black market or even selling there organs in insane prices to other people. As in Germany, it will coast around $3500 to donate a liver. But in other i...