The Market for Kidneys
A few years ago someone tried to auction off a kidney on Ebay. The price rose to $5.7 million before Ebay discovered the auction and closed it down. Selling human body organs for money is illegal in the United States and most parts of the world.
Word now comes from Pakistan that a thriving market for kidneys is out in the open.
A kidney nets the donor $2,500, sometimes less than half that amount, while recipients -- some 2,000 a year -- pay $6,000 to $12,000, compared with $70,000 in neighboring China.I have long thought that our current system of allocating kidneys (and other body organs) is both inefficient and quite unfair. Over 90,000 Americans are currently on a waiting list for an organ transplantation. A good number of them will die before making it to the top of the list.Critics blame an economic system that enmeshes farmers in chronic debt, forcing them to sell their kidneys, and say the trade should be banned. The government says it is taking action.
Why not allow some form of monetary inducement to potential donors?
2 comments:
Personally, I do not see anything wrong with allowing people to sell their kidneys. As the post said, over 90,000 Americans are on the waiting list for an organ transplantation. Unfortunately, many die before even being close to receiving help. If someone has a kidney that they are willing the give up, I do not see what the problem is. Yes sometimes the money issue can get out of hand but if more supply is available the price will go down. Besides, people shouldn't sell only for profit, they should realize the larger benefit of helping a person and their family. What do you have to lose? America is already losing people because the selling of body organs is illegal, why not try legalizing it?
I agree that our current organ allocation system is flawed, but the idea of living people being able to freely sell their own kidneys for profit seems a little wrong to me. In order to make more kidneys available for those in need, without taking them from the living, an organ market could be made using kidneys from people who no longer need them; the deceased. Instead of countless people taking perfectly good organs with them to the grave, more people would agree to allow their organs to be removed after death and given/sold/allocated to those in need if they knew that their families would be paid a certain amount of money in compensation for each removed organ. Those removed organs, of which there would likely be many more of now, could be raffled off or sold or given to those who need them the most, and many more lives would be saved.
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