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...
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…
