Voices: Selling organs

Organs, like blood, are in us to give. Unfortunately, the circumstances in which we can give our organs are much more limited. We can donate a kidney, part of a liver, a patch of skin or some bone marrow while still living, but generally donations have to wait until death. Moreover, the process for donating organs while living is dangerous compared with donating blood. The result is a severe shrtage of donated organs.

Money then enters the picture. And when you can make money by selling something, you have an incentive to make it appear to be more valuable than it may be - you lie about your condition, increasing the risk to both the donor and the recepient.

The poor are especially impacted both because they are more likely to need the money they can get by donating and because they are less likely to be able to afford to buy the organ(s) they need. Organs for sale is really just another form of two-tiered medicine.

On the other side of the arguement, because the potential profits are large, this becomes another source of profits for criminals. But if the practice were legal, would this put an end to black-market organs? Because legalizing the trade can do little to alleviate the shortage, there would still be plenty of profits to be made. Moreover, it would make it more difficult to control since you would have a harder time determining whether an organ is legal or not.

In the end I believe reasonable people of conscience have to be opposed to the sale of human organs.

Gary Dale