Why Not Legalize Organ Selling?

[JimBowie1958]

And all your snarkiness is supposed to justify a system that currently lets nearly 5,000 people die in the US each year?

I don't think so.

Its not the 'system' that lets people die.

Sure it is as it is the current system that has criminalized selling ones organs for archaic reasons pertaining to the Christian resurrection. Immolation was also once illegal for the same reason, IIRC.

Its the selfishness of people who refuse to become organ donors. Change the rules, make the system opt out instead of opt in. Problem solved.

There is nothing selfish about not wanting to give hospitals a profit incentive to pronounce you dead and then harvest your organs like you were cattle.

 

[Katzndogz]

Why not legalize organ theft and sale. Just think of the lives that would be saved.

Well, the theft thingy could be a bit of a big deal, you know?

Big risk, big reward.

 

[JimBowie1958]

If a guy wants to sell a kidney to the highest bidder he should be able to. It is his property after all.

How would you be able to distinguish between legitimate organ donation and co-coerced organ donation?

There was an all female prison in the United States and I remember the guards were having sex with all of the inmates. There is a lot of room for manipulation and coercion of people behind bars and they could essentially sell someone's kidney.

Inmates and Prison Officers in Sex Pandemic in U.S. Jails / Sunday World

Sex trafficking exists in the United States. Making kidney sales legal would only encourage the trafficking in the United States.

You make some valid points but then every approach has people that game the system or coerce people into doing things they would otherwise not do.

But how many people are coerced into selling their homes unwilling, other than the government?

I guess it happens but it is rare enough to let people have the right to sell their own homes if they choose.

 

[emilynghiem]

Let's try other options as well:

1. spiritual healing can cure some diseases to reduce the need for more invasive procedures. one lady I know should have been dead from a rare kidney or liver disease, but spiritual healing either cured it or allowed to continue living a normal life which doctors can't explain. but her case is documented in the TX med center because it was so rare.

2. UTMB doctors experimented with growing a human lung in lab, using just aquariums.
what if this technology be developed to grow other organs for transplants in the future

3. as for selling organs, this would still require special supervision to make sure there is no fraud or coercion or other problems this could open the door to.

I still oppose the federal insurance mandates in ACA. if you can impose that WITHOUT consent of taxpayers to "save more lives by covering more health care" what else could be imposed by federal govt against people's free choice?

This teaches a very dangerous precedent that if some group believes in a better way to do something, even if it isn't proven or you don't agree or choose freely it could be mandated.

when you start looking at all the other kinds of policies that could be mandated, isn't it clear that people should consent first and not be forced by government to participate?

Cash for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs - WSJ.com

In 2012, 95,000 American men, women and children were on the waiting list for new kidneys, the most commonly transplanted organ. Yet only about 16,500 kidney transplant operations were performed that year. Taking into account the number of people who die while waiting for a transplant, this implies an average wait of 4.5 years for a kidney transplant in the U.S.

The situation is far worse than it was just a decade ago, when nearly 54,000 people were on the waiting list, with an average wait of 2.9 years. For all the recent attention devoted to the health-care overhaul, the long and growing waiting times for tens of thousands of individuals who badly need organ transplants hasn't been addressed.

Finding a way to increase the supply of organs would reduce wait times and deaths, and it would greatly ease the suffering that many sick individuals now endure while they hope for a transplant. The most effective change, we believe, would be to provide compensation to people who give their organs—that is, we recommend establishing a market for organs....

The toll on those waiting for kidneys and on their families is enormous, from both greatly reduced life expectancy and the many hardships of being on dialysis. Most of those on dialysis cannot work, and the annual cost of dialysis averages about $80,000. The total cost over the average 4.5-year waiting period before receiving a kidney transplant is $350,000, which is much larger than the $150,000 cost of the transplant itself.

Individuals can live a normal life with only one kidney, so about 34% of all kidneys used in transplants come from live donors. The majority of transplant kidneys come from parents, children, siblings and other relatives of those who need transplants. The rest come from individuals who want to help those in need of transplants...

Paying donors for their organs would finally eliminate the supply-demand gap. In particular, sufficient payment to kidney donors would increase the supply of kidneys by a large percentage, without greatly increasing the total cost of a kidney transplant.

We have estimated how much individuals would need to be paid for kidneys to be willing to sell them for transplants. These estimates take account of the slight risk to donors from transplant surgery, the number of weeks of work lost during the surgery and recovery periods, and the small risk of reduction in the quality of life.

Our conclusion is that a very large number of both live and cadaveric kidney donations would be available by paying about $15,000 for each kidney. That estimate isn't exact, and the true cost could be as high as $25,000 or as low as $5,000—but even the high estimate wouldn't increase the total cost of kidney transplants by a large percentage.

Few countries have ever allowed the open purchase and sale of organs, but Iran permits the sale of kidneys by living donors. Scattered and incomplete evidence from Iran indicates that the price of kidneys there is about $4,000 and that waiting times to get kidneys have been largely eliminated.

Nearly 5,000 people die each year waiting for a kidney for transplant, and all because the laws forbid selling one's organs.

This is just stupidity to the nth degree unless someone can make a case that nearly 5,000 lives are spared each year by keeping the sale of one's organs illegal.

Meanwhile you can give your organs away with voluntary organ donation and thus give hospitals an incentive to not do all it can to save your life or pull the plug just a little quicker than legally required.

Legalizing the sale of kidneys would save lives, period (and not an Obama period either).

 

[Katzndogz]

Organ donation creates an incentive to let people die and refuse medical care just to get their organs. It would be very difficult to make sure opt out provisions get noticed. The medical personnel just don't check the wallet to see if there's a card or the website is down. Unless you are tattooed with "not an organ donor" it would be hard to prove the deceased intended to opt out and even then greedy medical personnell would say "Oops we missed it". After all, once the person is dead, who is going to complain?

The only way opt out provsions would work is if it was proven that an unwilling donor was harvested, all of the harvested organs and tissue would be repossessed and treated as the remains should have been treated.

 

[Chuckt]

If a guy wants to sell a kidney to the highest bidder he should be able to. It is his property after all.

How would you be able to distinguish between legitimate organ donation and co-coerced organ donation?

There was an all female prison in the United States and I remember the guards were having sex with all of the inmates. There is a lot of room for manipulation and coercion of people behind bars and they could essentially sell someone's kidney.

Inmates and Prison Officers in Sex Pandemic in U.S. Jails / Sunday World

Sex trafficking exists in the United States. Making kidney sales legal would only encourage the trafficking in the United States.

You make some valid points but then every approach has people that game the system or coerce people into doing things they would otherwise not do.

But how many people are coerced into selling their homes unwilling, other than the government?

I guess it happens but it is rare enough to let people have the right to sell their own homes if they choose.

Selling homes is a little more complicated because it often involves multiple people like a spouse. There are mortgage companies that were nothing but predatory lenders and I don't know if new legislation made that more impossible or not.

My neighbors hit a telephone pole with their car. Because of their age and distance from a hospital, they were airlifted by helicopter to a hospital. The bill for the helicopter was over $7,000 and no one can open a credit card in your name legally but the police can tell you to get in a helicopter and go the hospital and you or your insurance are stuck with the bill.

There are ways to coerce you and the fact that you can't claim bankruptcy anymore and not have to pay your creditors means that they could try an attempt to get you to sell your kidneys. It might be far off but if it is legalized, your organs can be considered assets which are sellable.

You need more checks and balances and you need to have organ sales regulated by an ethics panel because prisons have become a business and you can't expect the government or strangers to have your best interest at heart. I've worked for enough employers that only want their money.

 

[emilynghiem]

And all your snarkiness is supposed to justify a system that currently lets nearly 5,000 people die in the US each year?

I don't think so.

Its not the 'system' that lets people die. Its the selfishness of people who refuse to become organ donors. Change the rules, make the system opt out instead of opt in. Problem solved.

Dear Noomi:
I think it is divine will which people give and which people receive.

1. After I talked with doctors about the chances of minorities or biracial patients finding compatible bone marrow donors, I was told it was all chance. Even if you got large numbers of people to sign up, the chances of minorities matching their HLA compatibility was 1/10. (For Caucasians patients, the chances are 8 or 9/10, because HLA is more compatible with other Caucasians. But not for minorities.)

2. If you read that story in Reader's Digest, where two people sitting next to each other on a plane ended up with one contacting the family of their newly deceased relative, and turned out to be the perfect organ match for the other person's family member who was currently dying for lack of a donor. They were both on the same plane heading to be with their families, and it turned out their loved ones were compatible.

I know that if everyone signed up, the numbers and probability would be greater.
but the same way there is a "divine order and will" to this process,
by the same process, people naturally learn to participate and share freely, moved by love, not by force of law.

http://projectmichelle.com/
here is my friend Meagan's website for her daughter
the greatest demand is for minorities: Asian, African,
Latino, Native American, and biracial of all mixes.
the more specific the match (such as Nigerian or
Vietnamese, compatible donors are more likely to be found)

 

[Katzndogz]

Chuck that is an excellent point. Once a person's organs are financial assets they can be used in a bankruptcy distribution or collateral. They will also become valuable assets to steal and harder to trace with fraudulent agreements and consent.

 

[Noomi]

Oh hell yeah they would. And why should I be forced into a system where I have no control over how they are used? I don't want my lungs ending up in a trash can because they tried to wedge them in a 10 year old.

I think that each organ donor should have the right to decide where their organs go - for example, you should be able to dictate if they go to a smoker, or an alcoholic. Your organs, your choice, even after death, I say.

It sounds like you're endorsing an unfairly quick judge of character. Does a smoker with a family not receive a transplant just because you check a box that says "Not for smokers"?

Its not unfair at all. You have one set of lungs. If you smoke, you ruin them. What right do you have to expect a new pair?

 

[JimBowie1958]

I think that each organ donor should have the right to decide where their organs go - for example, you should be able to dictate if they go to a smoker, or an alcoholic. Your organs, your choice, even after death, I say.

It sounds like you're endorsing an unfairly quick judge of character. Does a smoker with a family not receive a transplant just because you check a box that says "Not for smokers"?

Its not unfair at all. You have one set of lungs. If you smoke, you ruin them. What right do you have to expect a new pair?

The same right anyone has to live without a fascist like you telling them that they cannot.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBZsTf6oLfY]George Bernard Shaw Justify Yourself.mpg - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JimBowie1958]

Chuck that is an excellent point. Once a person's organs are financial assets they can be used in a bankruptcy distribution or collateral. They will also become valuable assets to steal and harder to trace with fraudulent agreements and consent.

And the laws can be defined and government oversight established in such a way as to prevent such nonsense.

 

[Bill Angel]

There are over 3000 convicts on Death Row in the USA awaiting execution. Why not offer them the chance to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment in exchange for donating one of their kidneys?

 

[Godboy]

There are over 3000 convicts on Death Row in the USA awaiting execution. Why not offer them the chance to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment in exchange for donating one of their kidneys?

How about we just speed up the process of killing them, then harvest them for ALL their organs?

 

[Chuckt]

I think that each organ donor should have the right to decide where their organs go - for example, you should be able to dictate if they go to a smoker, or an alcoholic. Your organs, your choice, even after death, I say.

It sounds like you're endorsing an unfairly quick judge of character. Does a smoker with a family not receive a transplant just because you check a box that says "Not for smokers"?

Its not unfair at all. You have one set of lungs. If you smoke, you ruin them. What right do you have to expect a new pair?

I am not a doctor but I was told if you had a lung transplant, you would only live ten years because the organs fail.

Kidney donors may get twice the time before they fail. The other thing is that you can't just get any kidney implanted and expect it to do the job. It has to be able to be big enough to do the job.

 

[Chuckt]

Chuck that is an excellent point. Once a person's organs are financial assets they can be used in a bankruptcy distribution or collateral. They will also become valuable assets to steal and harder to trace with fraudulent agreements and consent.

And the laws can be defined and government oversight established in such a way as to prevent such nonsense.

Drug companies weren't allowed to advertise and now they are allowed to advertise their medicines. It becomes complicated when my doctor starts putting up a TV screen to run the advertisements in the office waiting room and he starts prescribing from a group of advertisers in his office. If you advertise, your medicine gets prescribed and if you don't, your medicine is low on the list to get prescribed.

Unless there are laws, there is favoritism.

 

[Chuckt]

There are over 3000 convicts on Death Row in the USA awaiting execution. Why not offer them the chance to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment in exchange for donating one of their kidneys?

That would be considered Unconstitutional as it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There are over 3000 convicts on Death Row in the USA awaiting execution. Why not offer them the chance to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment in exchange for donating one of their kidneys?

That would be considered Unconstitutional as it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Why?

They are going to die, why not at least give them that option as they await execution?

Most find a remorse and this might be a good relief from some guilt.

 

[Katzndogz]

Chuck that is an excellent point. Once a person's organs are financial assets they can be used in a bankruptcy distribution or collateral. They will also become valuable assets to steal and harder to trace with fraudulent agreements and consent.

And the laws can be defined and government oversight established in such a way as to prevent such nonsense.

The laws work so well for everything else.

 

[Katzndogz]

There are over 3000 convicts on Death Row in the USA awaiting execution. Why not offer them the chance to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment in exchange for donating one of their kidneys?

That would be considered Unconstitutional as it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Why?

They are going to die, why not at least give them that option as they await execution?

Most find a remorse and this might be a good relief from some guilt.

Killers do not find remorse. The psychologist assigned to California's death row, Vonda Pelto, wrote a book about her experiences dealing with death row inmates. The title is "No Remorse" which might give you a clue.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Chuck that is an excellent point. Once a person's organs are financial assets they can be used in a bankruptcy distribution or collateral. They will also become valuable assets to steal and harder to trace with fraudulent agreements and consent.

And the laws can be defined and government oversight established in such a way as to prevent such nonsense.

The laws work so well for everything else.

Well enough for a person to usually take care of themselves in the vast majority of cases.

We would probably have more murder and theft were there no laws against it.