Should the buying and selling of organs and other body parts be allowed?

Question

just to make it clear: it is buying and selling organs and body parts for transplantation.

Answer 1

No. They should be donated. If people have to pay for organs that means the only ones who will get them are the ones who pay the big bucks for them. Secondly you have to consider if the donor is living or dead as there are some parts of the world where living people are willing to sell their organs for the right price. Paying for organs is detrimental to the less well off people in the world - the ones who can't afford to get them and those so poor they're willing to sell them.

Answer 2

Good question. It is a difficult one to answer for me because I believe strongly in personal freedom, especially when it comes to ones own body. Anyone who qualifies can sell their own blood or plasma (sometimes for pretty good money), so what is the difference between that and selling a kidney or piece of liver or whatever? And what about when the person has passed away? Who "owns" the body?
Then there are the moral considerations. It is possible that a market for this type of "product" would drive up the price so high that only the most wealthy and well connected people will be able to get the help they need, and the poor and middle class will just die for lack of money. At least if it is illegal to sell, then more people be given an equal opportunity to have a better life.
I am an organ donor and also choose to donate my blood, even though I could sell it for decent money (slightly rare blood type). The selling of organs etc should not be allowed until a system is in place to make distribution fair for all. We are talking life and death issues, and personal wealth should not be the deciding factor. I am looking forward to reading the other replies.

Answer 3

How about just renting them then?

Joking aside, the ethic answer should be no.
Clearly, if one buys a heart or any other vital organ, the "donor" is not the one benefiting from the sale, is he?
So, would it be possible that someone could buy "hot" organs, stolen from someone who was still much using them, harvested against his will?
If someone who is plugged on the machine, how "easily" would it be for someone to "accidently trip" on the power cord of the life support machine so that, "Oh, look, grandpa can now give his organs and we can sell them"?
At the other end of the "market", if there is two potential customers for an organ, who should get it? The one who needs it the msot or would have the better chance of surviving the transplant, or the one who can and will pay the most for it?

Here is another thing to ponder. David Crosby, the famous musician, used to over indulge in a lot of bad stuff -- he was a rock & roll star; everyone knows normal laws of nature should not apply to them, right? -- and after all that alcohol, cocaine, heroin, he needed a liver transplant, which he got in 1994. In 2004, he was arrested because he had weapons and drugs in his luggage in a hotel in New York. He also has diabetes, which may or not be the consequence of the abuse he subjected his body to before the liver transplant.
So the question is thus: is he taking good enough care of either his original and donated (purchased?) organs?
Just because he can afford it, should he be going around just buying what he needs from less fortunate people?

And suppose someone buys an organ for a lot of money, and it turn out the organ has a flaw in it, or a desease that was not detected before, that contaminates the recipeint. Could they sue the sucession of the donor? For how much more what they paid the organ?

Answer 4

It is already "allowed". Legally in some countries, but have no illusion, it happens in the US all the time.

It happens under good and bad circumstances. Criminally, in some cases.

When countries change to legally sold organs, organ procurements do NOT seem to increase. This is more or less a fact, though the data not collected perfectly, in any of the studies.

What does happen, is donor life lost drops to near zero. Donor post op renal failure drops to near zero. Donors are compensated at roughly 5x the rate of the "black" market.

The loser? the middle men. the organ brokers, I call them scum.

Let's be honest, the docs put in the organ for money. The hospital gets money, the nurses... pharmacy for all the dozens of medications the recipients require makes more than all the above. The donor deserves cash for that kidney.

As for the man with the price theory, I wouldn't give up my lung, just to have it put right back in for 50 million. Kidney, well, that's another story. Can there every be "informed" consent?... another discussion.

Answer 5

RECEIVING AN ORGAN TO LENGTHEN ONE'S LIFE, OR TO SAVE IT, SHOULD NEVER BE A "BUSINESS."

i am an organ donor. it says so on my driver's license, and in my estate's, as well as my doctors', files, there is a living will and durable power of attorney that supports the living will. in my living will it says that i want my organs DONATED to anyone that NEEDS them, and not for money. it also says that IF the receiver WISHES to make a donation towards my burial AFTER he has received a viable organ from my body and never had been told what my living will said before he got the organ, that it would be okay with me if my estate got it, to help with after death costs, debts, funeral, etc.

it is certainly not a CONDITION that the person who gets my organs has any money to give to my estate at all.

and this is why:

who am i to judge who is most needy of my organs? am i to judge who is based on the money they can and will pay? that would mean that i see wealthy people as BETTER THAN people that don't have money. are wealthy people any better? nope, they are not. nobody, in my book, is better than anyone else (excepting, maybe, the rest of the world is better than the fundamentalist islamics that believe that "the infidel," you and me, are to be KILLED because we don't read their little books). would i hope that an organ would save a terrorist's life? heck no! but it may, because there is no distinction in my mind of which HUMAN BEING is more worthy of being able to live just by my giving of an organ or more than one after i am legally dead (that must be proven before they take part of my body). (also no organs will be taken for donation or for money, unless the rich were crazy, from my body if i have any type of cancer).

the person that should get my skin (this is the organ that i most wish someone to take, a burn victim, because burns are absolutely the most painful wound you can ever have) is the person that needs it the most, and it should be taken from me to graft onto the most needy first. so long as the burn victim or someone that needs a different organ has a "tissue match," then it is he/she that gets the organ, no matter what their station in life, meaning wealth or poverty--or even what their politics are--it does not matter--they are all human beings in need.

it's so true what oldschool said, which is that why in the world would a hospital charge $75,000 to the sick or wounded that needs my organs, in order to transplant them??? if they have insurance, fine. if they don't, then the doctors and hospitals who make enough money as it is should simply perform the procedure to give my organs from my now-dead body to those that need them the most.

RECEIVING AN ORGAN TO LENGTHEN ONE'S LIFE, OR TO SAVE IT, SHOULD NEVER BE A "BUSINESS."

even walter payton, such a rich gentleman (and i do mean gentleman) couldn't buy a liver, so he died. i don't think he ever even asked to buy one.

if the law allowed for people to buy body organs, then i'm sure that sometimes people might kill their children in order that they get money for their organs, because people that would do that never should have had children to begin with. they are usually drug addicts, and they neglect their children for the "fix."

the rich can now get themselves cloned. if a sheep can be cloned, then a human being can be cloned. of course, that would be done in utter secrecy. if you have a biological clone, there never would be any problem with tissue rejection. so of course, the rich having themselves cloned would be kept secret because the biological clone would be a living organism, which would be killed for a body part.

no, no, no, bodies and their parts shouldn't be bought or sold.

Answer 6

I think people are missing the point here. Right now - it is not legal. You could not sell a lung if you wanted to. You could only give it away.

Having said that... I notice that none of you are jumping to "donate" your lung to a total stranger.

Perhaps if that total stranger were to offer you $10 Million for one lung, you'd be willing to part with it for the remainer of your life?

Maybe for $50 Million?

Everyone gas a price, and you've got to admit. If rich people were buying, more people would be selling.

There would have to be strick enforcement of ethical laws though... You should not be allowed to offer a crackhead 2K for their spleen. They'd probably sell it for a rock or two.

Then again... who want's a crackhead's spleen???

Answer 7

If you are talking about organs for transplantation, no, but not because I don't believe in capitalism.

No, because the buyers are GUARANTEED to be in desperate needs and the situation leaves too much room for the whole system to be taken over by massive greed.

If you are talking about bodies for medical research, ie. not for transplantation, I don't see anything wrong with it, if the person (who is now dead) agreed to it before hand.

After all, body is his/her ultimate posession.

Answer 8

i think of you tousled on your presentation. If I examine what you had to declare appropriate, it incredibly is that the prevention of advertising physique aspects is to sidestep basically people who can take care of to pay for them from having them. maximum people who can "take care of to pay for" them accomplish that from having coverage to pay for the operation. The prohibition from advertising your self is the two a ethical concern, a wellbeing concern for the two the recipient, and the donor, to boot a compatibility concern. there is another element, the ethics of understanding who have been given your physique area, and "leaning' on them for extra money to your sacrifice. The scientific occupation won't even enable a platelets donor comprehend the place their donated platelets went. A bone marrow donor might o.k. by no ability comprehend who have been given their bone marrow. that's for an quite in simple terms reason, because of fact the donor has the main suitable to returned out on the final 2nd. in the event that they accomplish that, then they have in simple terms effectively signed the death certificates of the recipient. So, there are various good motives to not enable a living donor to sell what they have on the industry. as properly, are you incredibly keen to stay with only considered one of something which you have 2 of. What if something does bypass incorrect, is the money made on the sale of that different area worth in all probability demise for. Get your self a good activity, and wait till you're ineffective earlier offering your self up for people who might want your physique aspects.

Answer 9

For sale? No. As a donation, yes, and to be encouraged.
Buying and selling can lead to horrible circumstances where
people can be exposed to the worst form of exploitation, poor
children in particular. Best wishes

Answer 10

NO! People would be massacring people just to make a quick buck. They used to have body snatcher's when Dr's and surgens of long ago needed to do experiments on real humans even though it went against the church to do so. Some massacred people to get money from these researchers. Nowadays money talks and I wouldnt want Brittany Spears to pay someone to kill me for my eyes. Lets not go there please!