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Buying Kidneys - A Good Thing?
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Psst, wanna buy a kidney?
Nov 16th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Governments should let people trade kidneys, not convict them for it
IF THEY were just another product, the market would work its usual magic: supply would respond to high prices and rise to meet surging demand. But human kidneys are no ordinary commodity. Trading them is banned in most countries. So supply depends largely on the charity of individuals: some are willing to donate one of their healthy kidneys while they are still alive (at very little risk to their health); others agree to let their kidneys be used when they die. Unsurprisingly, with altruism the only incentive, not enough people offer.
Kidneys are the subject of a quietly growing global drama. As people in the rich world live longer and grow fatter, queues for kidneys are lengthening fast: at a rate of 7% a year in America, for example, where last year 4,039 people died waiting. Doctors are allowing older and more sluggish kidneys to be transplanted. Ailing, rich patients are buying kidneys from the poor and desperate in burgeoning black markets. One bigwig broker ma
y soon stand trial in South Africa (see article). Clandestine kidney-sellers get little medical follow-up, buyers often catch hepatitis or HIV, and both endure the consequences of slap-dash surgery.
The Iranian model
In the face of all this, most countries are sticking with the worst of all policy options. Governments place the onus on their citizens to volunteer organs. A few European countries, including Spain, manage to push up supply a bit by presuming citizens' consent to having their organs transplanted when they die unless they specify otherwise. Whether or not such presumed consent is morally right, it does not solve the supply problem, in Spain or elsewhere. On the other hand, if just 0.06% of healthy Americans aged between 19 and 65 parted with one kidney, the country would have no waiting list.
The way to encourage this is to legalise the sale of kidneys. That's what Iran has done. An officially approved patients' organisation oversees the transactions. Donors get $2,000-4,000. The waiting list has been eliminated.
Many people will find the very idea of individuals selling their organs repugnant. Yet an organ market, in body parts of deceased people, already exists. Companies make millions out of it. It seems perverse, then, to exclude individuals. What's more, having a kidney removed is as safe as common elective surgeries and even beauty treatments (it is no more dangerous than liposuction, for example), which sets it apart from other types of living-organ donation. America already lets people buy babies from surrogate mothers, and the risk of dying from renting out your womb is six times higher than from selling your kidney.
With proper regulation, a kidney market would be a big improvement on the current, sorry state of affairs. Sellers could be checked for disease and drug use, and cared for after operations. They could, for instance, receive health insurance as part of their payment—which would be cheap because properly screened donors appear to live longer than the average Joe with two kidneys. Buyers would get better kidneys, faster. Both sellers and buyers would do better than in the illegal market, where much of the money goes to the middleman.
Instinct often trumps logic. Sometimes that's right. But in this case, the instinct that selling bits of oneself is wrong leads to many premature deaths and much suffering. The logical answer, in this case, is the humane one. |
I never ever thought I would advocate such thing, but they do actually have a point! Of course assuming the state would pay to buy the kidneys, so it wouldn't be a matter of money who could survive and who could not... ;) |
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| Arbiter |
| Well, I don't have a problem with buying kidneys, but I do have a problem with it being a government program. |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Well, I don't have a problem with buying kidneys, but I do have a problem with it being a government program. |
So you can't be too happy with China then... |
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| Marc Summers |
| I'm trying to sell one of my kidneys on the black market so I can buy some decks and a mixer. |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Marc Summers
I'm trying to sell one of my kidneys on the black market so I can buy some decks and a mixer. |
I thought PS3s were all the rage? :crazy:
you could at least have your recipient stand in line for you.... ;) |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Fir3start3r
So you can't be too happy with China then... |
There's not a government in the world I am happy with, so that really goes without saying. |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
There's not a government in the world I am happy with, so that really goes without saying. |
You poor baby. There isn't a government that makes you happy. Why would that be? Because you want a totalitarian government that kills millions of its people and that declares war on its neighbors? |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| the body should not become commodified in this manner. all it does is further entrench the rich-poor divide. |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
You poor baby. There isn't a government that makes you happy. Why would that be? Because you want a totalitarian government that kills millions of its people and that declares war on its neighbors? |
Every government that exists presently is horribly inefficient due to a number of phenomena (corruption, overmanagement, pandering to special interests, etc). I see nothing in any of them to evoke the emotion, happiness. However, I am not particularly unhappy with most of them either. They do, by in large, live up to the very low expectations I have for them, and, even if they are of a contemptible nature, they have their uses as well. |
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| Lilith |
Well they dont run a business on a popularity contest, unfortunately in most countries they still do depending on who has most mass appeal too the voters rather than someone that can actually do the job. Rest of them get up there by hook or crook and aside from that dont tend too be very qualified either.
The thought of the organ legging being a cash thing worries me a lot, they shouldnt refer too them as donors either, making a donation is one thing, selling them is a business transaction. Governments and business are always shady things... |
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| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Every government that exists presently is horribly inefficient due to a number of phenomena (corruption, overmanagement, pandering to special interests, etc). |
To you what is the role of the government suppose to be?
| quote: | | I see nothing in any of them to evoke the emotion, happiness. |
How is the government suppost to evoke the emotion, happiness? You seem very difficult to please.
| quote: | | However, I am not particularly unhappy with most of them either. They do, by in large, live up to the very low expectations I have for them, and, even if they are of a contemptible nature, they have their uses as well. |
Like what providing housing for people to lazy to work? |
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| Arbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
To you what is the role of the government suppose to be?'
How is the government suppost to evoke the emotion, happiness? You seem very difficult to please. |
Essentially, the role of the government is to fill the power void that would exist in it's absence by placing restrictions upon how the various individuals and organizations under it may attempt to control each other, and to implement some types of policies that will strengthen the society of which it is a part. It is not necessarily supposed to make anyone happy, including myself, although if a government performed these functions well, I would probably be somewhat happy with it. Unfortunately, no governments do perform this function well.
| quote: | | Like what providing housing for people to lazy to work? |
In a manner of speaking, yes. Current governments are very wasteful. However, the resources they waste do not all disappear into oblivion. Many of them end up in the hands of those who know how to properly exploit the weaknesses of a particular government's systems. |
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