Transterrestrial Musings

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what makes organ sales unethical is they are both
irreversible and irreplacable.

While each day is unique to me, i can work extra days on
saturday/sunday, and while I may be desperate for a paycheck,
when I work the next day, i will produce more labor. If a better
job comes tomorrow, i can quit my crappy one and take another,
thus meeting core tenets of classical economics.

My body organs are unique, and irreplacable and to a practical
matter one time sales. Once you sell one kidney,
you cannot ever get it back, sell it again, etc.

The proper scale is that we view wage labor as ethical
and slavery as unethical, even though, it's about selling labor.

I don't have a problem with prostitution, but, I don't believe in
paid adoption.

Most societies will let you sell Hair, Blood, cell material,
but they won't let you sell body parts.

It was only shylock who wanted to trade in Flesh.

Posted by anonymous at April 26, 2006 12:14 PM

What if I had a kidney that was an exact match for a donor who was willing to pay what I felt it was worth? I wouldn’t consider that to be exploitive in any way except that in a way I would be the one exploiting someone desperate for a kidney. Anyway we are quibbling over a problem that can be solved if we would get over our silly taboo’s, superstitions, or misplace grief and allow our next of kin to freely allow our organs to be used. If it were a given that a hospital could use your organs, unless you specifically forbid it, rather than the other way around, thousands of lives would be bettered or saved.

Posted by JJS at April 26, 2006 12:50 PM

If it were a given that a hospital could use your organs, unless you specifically forbid it, rather than the other way around, thousands of lives would be bettered or saved.

If I had to go around specifically forbidding all of the things I didn't want people doing to me, I'd have no real rights. You can't put the burden of the avoidance of abuse on the warnings of the victim. There are probably thousands of ways that you could be taken advantage of if you were unconcious and hospitalized (ie, incapable of defending yourself).
This is why the bioethics debates get creepy to me. There is far too much of a predatory urge to do things to others against their consent.

Posted by Aaron at April 26, 2006 12:58 PM

"Is it unethical to hire a maid who is financially desperate?"

Apparently so if you failed to consider one of the Kennedy wives.

On organ donations, I have checked the little box on my driver's license that gives permission to "harvest" in case of death. I can understand, if not agree with, those who refuse to do so.

Donating (or selling) while I am alive? It may be ethical for me to do so, but I would probably want to look at the ethics of whoever made the request.

Posted by John Anderson at April 26, 2006 02:16 PM

I honestly don't think that organ sale is THAT bad. Primarily because it is common, common I say to use the heart warming stories of a 5 year old rescued from kidney failure by a distant family member willing to give up a kidney, if thise family member hadn't stepped forward, the 5 year old would have likely died due to the organ transplant wait list doohickey. Thats a story that basicaly says "listen bub, you got too of them, get on the donor list and come in and do the right thing, if not, you're killing a 5 year old" even though my "spare" kidney might end up in a murderer spending life in jail (no really it might)

Also, there is the "Bloodwork" (the clint eastwood movie) hypothetical where a murder was commited (not by clint) exclusively for the purpose of saving clints life.

Those two extremes said, how is it MORE ethical to remove my ability to dictate how my body is used? I use my body every day, and I wouldn't willingly work for a baby rapist, and if I get blacklisted for not following the dictates of society by refusing to use my body to earn money for evil scum I would accept it happily.

Some families and individuals are harder up than others, but I highly doubt that there would be an vast new market of people willing to harvest and sell their kidneys and portions of their livers if people are allowed to sell said same organs, and sell is actually the wrong word, it's more like "accepting a financial benefit." More likely, it would be like egg and sperm donation, only reversed. Instead of the "buyer" being given all of the information about the donor, the donor would be given the information about the transplantee.

The idea that "ethics" are violated by allowing the "sale" of organs is false. It is the replacement of the individual donors personal moral senses in exchange for an institutional ethics that Doctors believe is theirs by right.

Final note: If the institutionalized ethics of doctors is superior to individual ethics in that it ignores financial compensation, explain to me Mickey Mantles transplant? and explain to me the size of the houses owned by transplant surgeons.

Posted by wickedpinto at April 26, 2006 02:53 PM

We have buyers remorse laws that allow people to return cars after a few days, but then people owe $20k or so which is more than what kidneys are selling for abroad. We routinely process house sales that involve hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Is there a high price at which we would not worry that the kidney seller is being exploited? E.g., $1,000,000? At that price, it is certainly credible that the quality of medical care, nutrition, shelter, and safety could rise enough so that the life expectancy of the donor was actually higher after the donation.

I think that reversability is not it either--there are plenty of irreversable decisions that are more weighty. Value is not it either--there are plenty of high value decisions too. What makes kidneys different from dialysis machines when it comes to buying and selling?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at April 26, 2006 02:56 PM

> what makes organ sales unethical is they are both irreversible and irreplacable.
> My body organs are unique, and irreplacable and to a practical matter one time sales.

If organs are not irreplaceable. If they were, there would be no such thing as organ transplants, by definition.

Every living thing is unique. A Rembrant oil painting is unique. Is it unethical to sell an an oil painting, because that painting is unique, irreplacable, and a one-time sale?

Posted by at April 26, 2006 05:01 PM

If anybody ever steals my identity, I plan on selling both my kidneys.

That'll show him.

Posted by McGehee at April 27, 2006 06:32 AM

Will black market organ sales evolve into something more legitimate like buying a rich kid's way into college by building a new building? If a rich person in need of a kidney builds a new wing for a hospital, should they jump to the head of the queue?

Posted by Sam Dinkin at April 27, 2006 08:45 AM

Again...This discussion would be moot if we weren't soaking perfectly good organs with formaldehyde and tossing them in the ground or worse burning them. (Where are the environmentalists when we need them?) Maybe we should sweeten the pot. If your killed in a car accident and your organs are harvested perhaps there is a way to have the proceeds added to your estate.

Posted by JJS at April 27, 2006 09:16 AM

JJS: The idea isn't terrible, but there's also a matter of incentives.

By which I mean, not the incentive to sell an organ (money), but the incentive to let someone who "would probably have died anyway" die a lot faster and without much effort to save them, so their organs will be (more) usable when harvested.

(Anyone thinking this incentive couldn't have any effect in the real world is invited to look at the real-life slippery slope of euthanasia in Holland, and also reflect on how flexible peoples' ethical standards are known from long experience to become... awful things can and do come about where the doer is thoroughly convinced that they're serving The Greater Good.)

A system where the directed and conscious sale of organs is permitted takes uch of that pressure off, for those organs that one can sell and still live.

Posted by Sigivald at April 27, 2006 09:48 AM

JJS, "Gateway" an entire family bought their way into the stock exchange of "gateway" thanks to the fact that their young sick son, was sacrificed so that the family could join the "gateway" pioneers and MAYBE find prosperity.

I forget who the author is, I LOVE the friggen book, because really, theres all kinds of space stuff, but I think the real story is the willingness of the reader to engage in a pursuit of self.

(btw, I'm talking about the cat who wrote "the heechee" series? is it pohl?)

In all life there is sacrifice, and for every benefit to a life there has been someone to sacrifice for that benefit. For instance, there isn't a single friggen American who shouldn't damn well kneel down and kiss images of the founding fathers and john locke everytime they say "no blood for oil" or "not my boy" or "may you never serve, but if you must always be the first" "service is the greatest form of love" or "giving is recieving" or "as you excercise your rights remember those who surrendered them to protect those rights" or "Having rights, and USING rights, is at best secondary to PROTECTING rights" there are a million phrases, many contradictory, all of them noble.

Why can't I CHOSE to sell my guts to help my family? If assisted suicide is cool, why isn't suicide? If a suicide patient can donate their organs, why can't a death penalty convict? there are at least 2 cases of death penalty convicts who have been denied their fourth (you know that "(numeric four) T" is another banned entry? whawhawah? let me test this. . . ."mexican face hate") ammendment rights, by losing control of their own bodies because they prefered either hanging or firing squad so that they could donate organs. All other forms of legal execution destroy the organs.

I've mentioned this, Nitrogen asphyxia seems like a VERY good option, just keep the "gas chambers," and have the individual facing death make their last statement as they are slowly suffocating?" I've personaly passed out thanks to NO, and to CO, and oddly to CO2 from a too tight gas mask. I never noticed anytime.

N asphyxia is not cruel, it is actualy very pacific, like your dentist having you count back from 99 when you never make it to 89 during an NO sedation.

(once again, I'm tired as hell, and I have a point, but I don't want to edit this otherwise I will lose track and delete it all.)

Posted by wickedpinto at April 27, 2006 11:07 PM

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