Question

While you may not sell one of your kidneys for $6000, a lot of people will. To understand why people "donate" their body parts for cash, keep in mind the horrible conditions that are part of the everyday life of the poor in the Least Industrialized Nations. Please answer the following questions and respond to as many other students as you wish.

1. What is wrong with people selling their body parts, if they want to?

2. Aren't poor people better off with one kidney and six years of extra earnings to buy a house, start a business, or take care of their families than with two kidneys and no such opportunities?

Answer 1

1.The United States currently prohibits the sale of kidneys, and a major concern about changing the law is that people with low incomes would be more likely to sell their organs. Poor people are under-represented as kidney transplant recipients: they account for 34 percent of patients newly diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease, but they receive just 6 percent of the nation’s kidney transplants, according to the study. Some ethicists worry that with compensation for kidneys, poor people would donate kidneys in disproportionate numbers and affluent people would receive them disproportionately

They estimated the market value of a donated kidney to be $75,000, based on the price that Medicare pays organ-procurement organizations and adjusting for factors, such as the longer duration of a transplant from a living donor. The total value of kidney transplantation to a single recipient was estimated to be $1.3 million, accounting for additional years of healthy life and assuming recipients would be able to obtain two transplants on average, replacing a donated kidney with a second one if the first stops functioning.

entrap the potential sellers, organ brokers tell them that they have two kidneys, but one of them is "sleeping" in the body. During the operation, doctors "awaken" this dormant kidney and take the old one out for donation. In this view, the second kidney is just baggage, a cash reserve buried in the lower back. Furthermore, sellers are told that their second kidney is no use to them if their first one fails, which quiets thoughts of "what if I need that second kidney in the future?" They're also told the surgery is 100 percent safe. "It's the same story the sellers told me again and again," Moniruzzaman says. "I couldn't believe how much of a dirty trick it can be."

After they agree to donate, sellers are tissue tested, and if there is a match, the broker will offer the seller around $1,150. But in most cases, the sellers do not receive anywhere near that amount. The organ brokers tack on extra fees for travel and other logistics, and the sellers make sometimes only half the initial amount -- and even then only after the surgery is completed.

2.

What would you do if you had to choose between selling your kidney and letting your children starve? I have come to believe that selling one's own kidney would be better than enduring the horrors of poverty. Living below the poverty line on less than a dollar per day makes it hard for parents to feed their children, let alone to clothe them, and organ sales offer a way out of destitution.