Argument Against the Proposition That Sales of Organs Should Not Be Compensated

Selling Human Organs: The Ethical Issue

Selling body transplants is one of the latest ventures that entrepreneurs have devised. Some see it as servicing a public good, whilst others perceive it as one more example of capitalism at its worst.

Barry Jacobs is an example of an international broker for bodily parts whose business involves matching up kidney "donors" with patients needing kidney transplants. The donor receives a magnanimous paycheck; the recipient receives a healthy kidney, and Jacobs, himself, profits by business in worse ways (Chapman, 1984). Jacobs and other advocates of organ-selling see this business as filling a necessary void. Approximately, 100,000 organ transplants are needed per annum, and only an annual 10,000 are performed due to the deficiency of matching organs. Biomedical breakthroughs have increased the success of these operations, but the procedures cannot always be accomplished due to depletion of stocks. People are simply not willing to donate their organs, resulting in the proposal that non-vital organs be sold in order to make up for the deficiency.

The following essay argues the ethical issues of this contention.

Advocates of human organ-selling

Advocates maintain that we have a moral obligation to save lives and to reduce suffering. Thousands of people, however, are dying due to the lack of bodily organs. People wait for years until someone is willing to donate an organ and then they wait further hoping it is the right one. In the meantime, they are sucked into lengthy painful treatments and government coffers get emptied due to the costliness of the dialysis treatment. We are paying unnecessary taxes -- proponents of the organs-for-sale scheme argue -- just because we have squeamish ethical scruples about selling the necessary organs. These organs are invaluable. People's lives depend on them. They would never receive them unless others were offered money to sell them. The enterprise is important because not only are poor people receiving money for selling something that they can do without, but they are also, simultaneously, saving lives. And these lives cannot be saved in any other way.

Commercial markets already exist for collecting blood and sperm. This is, arguably, more necessary than blood and sperm and far less capable of duplication. Opening commercial markets for organ selling would not only produce a greater quantity of organs but also a far more likely possibility of a match. It is calculated that approximately, 70% of organs fail on an annual basis. Generating a large supply would reduce this phenomenon (Borna, 1987).

Critics insist that poor people cannot afford the purchase price of an organ for sale making this an undemocratic business, but advocates of the organ-selling venture, however, maintain that given the potential expanse of the business, organ prices will drop within a few years bringing the price of organs within the reach of almost anyone thereby allowing almost anyone to afford them (Annas, 1984).

Opponents of the sale of human organs

Opponents argue that it is true that suffering should be alleviated and life should be saved, but limits should be imposed and ethical restrictions apply to saving human lives too. The entire venture of bartering human organs is an indignity to the rights of individuals as well as being an injustice to a democratic society. The wealthy will profit, whilst the poor, as always, will lose. Lives will be saved but it is only the lives of the wealthy causing more dissension, greed, and corruption. The poor person may be just as worthy of being saved - if not more so - as the wealthier one. Who is to pronounce who shall live and who shall die? Organ sellers, however, by selecting the wealthy above the poor are saving some whilst killing others in the process.

Justice demands that every person have an equal right to life. Organ selling threatens this right by torpedoing the equation. By introducing this kind of business -- which critics describe as heinous -- the very poor will be endangering their lives by selling their organs, whilst the very rich will profit by prolonging their lives and the lives of their loved ones. In this way, not only is organ-selling a monstrosity in that distinction will be made between who is to live and who to die, but this will also result in a form of genocide where poor will be encouraged to die (or, at least, to become potentially seriously ill) in order to proliferate the lives of the rich. (Borna, 1987).

Thirdly, organ selling will also encourage corruption since profiteers may well end up putting pressure on misinformed and naive individuals possibly even misleading them about the real value of their organs and paying them less than its true value. Such incidents happen routinely in parts of impoverished third-world countries and are referred to by critics as the "plundering of peasants' parts for profits." (Chapman, 1984). Pressurized and naive individuals who live in extreme poverty and who are often desperate and ill-informed would be 'compelled' by unscrupulous profit-seekers to sign consent and sell their organs without having the slightest idea of the significance of their act. Their doing so would turn them into commodities, trampling their dignity, whilst allowing others to violate their rights for commercial ends (Annas, 1984).

Personal Opinion

Proponents for commercial selling of organs argue that selling organs will save lives and reduce human suffering since many more people will be able to be matched up to organs. Their criteria, however, is that it is the wealthy people who will be matched up for organs and, ipso facto, lives and suffering of the wealthy will be saved. People with less money, however, will continue suffering and dying and their category may well be increased by the fact that it is they who will become donors to the wealthy.

My point, in other words, is that not only will misery ensue to a certain category of people -- and they are also human beings (!) -- continue unabated, but their misery, potential fatality, and deprivation will be exacerbated due to the 'worthy' business. Taking this into account, death and suffering may well be ameliorated in one quarter, but it will, correspondingly, rise in another. In this case, therefore, selling humans organs not only causes pain and potential death for others (namely for the donors) but only saves certain lives (allowing others to die) and creates a greedy and anarchistic world in the process -- and, therefore, should be disallowed.