People already legally sell blood, plasma, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney?
Have you volunteered to be an organ donor? I did.
I just clicked the box on the government form that asks if, once I die, I'm willing to donate my organs to someone who needs them.
Why not? Lots of people need kidneys, livers, etc. When I'm dead, I sure won't need mine.
Still, there are not enough donors. So, more than 100,000 Americans are on a waiting list for kidneys. Taking care of them is so expensive, it consumes almost 3 percent of the federal budget!
So why not allow Americans to sell an organ?
People already legally sell blood, plasma, sperm, eggs, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney? People have two. We can live a full life with just one.
If the U.S. allowed people to sell, the waiting list for kidneys would soon disappear.
"Poor people are going to be hurt," replies philosophy professor Samuel Kerstein in my latest video. Kerstein advised the World Health Organization, which supports the near universal laws that ban selling organs.
"Body parts to be put into Americans will come from poor countries," warns Kerstein. "I don't want to see poor people in Pakistan having their lives truncated."
What arrogance.
People have free will. Poor people are just as capable of deciding what's best for them as rich people. Who are you, I asked Kerstein, to tell people they may not?
"We are people who care about people who are different from us," he replied, "and poorer than we are. That's why we care."
These are "vacuous moralisms," replies Lloyd Cohen, an attorney who's long argued against the ban on organ-selling.
"Transplant surgeons make money. Transplant physicians make money. Hospitals, drug companies make money," he points out. "Everybody can get paid except the person delivering the irreplaceable part!"
He's right, of course, except that today some donors do get paid. Whenever foolish governments ban things that many people want, black markets appear.
Some people go overseas and buy organs from shady middlemen. Some make secret deals in America.
The process would be much safer, and prices lower, if buying and selling were legal.
"Financial incentives work for everything!" says Cohen. "They work for food; they work for housing; they work for clothing!"
He calls the warnings that "the weak and poor will be exploited" paternalistic.
"We heard the same argument with surrogacy," he points out. "Then you interview the women. (They say) this is a wonderful thing that they can do. And they get paid!"
Oddly, the one country that allows the selling of organs is Iran. The government buys organs from people willing to sell. I don't trust statistics from Iran, but a PBS report claims legalization has dramatically reduced the waiting time for a kidney.
Twenty-four years ago, Cohen went on 60 Minutes to argue for legalization of organ sales. At the time, he joined the debate simply because he strongly felt the ban was unjust. But now Cohen has learned that his own kidneys are failing. He needs a transplant.
He won't break the law and turn to the black market. He hopes to get a kidney though a group called MatchingDonors that pairs altruistic volunteers with people who need organs. Remarkably, a woman volunteered to give Cohen one of her kidneys. She's now being tested to see if she is a match for him.
If not, Cohen will be back on the waiting list with 102,914 other Americans. Most will die, waiting.
"Organs that could restore people to health and extend life are instead being buried and burned," sighs Cohen.
All because timid governments would rather suppress commerce than give patients a market-based new shot at life.
that economics MUST be subordinated to morality in lawmaking.
I agree with you. The problem is liberals call murdering children moral. They call all kinds of stuff that is immoral moral. They call moral stuff immoral.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. ... I have seen what is good called evil and what is evil called good.
I agree with you. The problem is liberals call murdering children moral. They call all kinds of stuff that is immoral moral. They call moral stuff immoral.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. ... I have seen what is good called evil and what is evil called good.
The balance to be struck, for me, is on matters of life and death, permanent matters, versus matters of personal behavior.
So, for example, I draw a firm line when it comes to murdering children: no. Therefore, no abortion - including in cases of rape (one does not acquire the right to murder a child because one has been raped).
Selling organs is permanently weakening/internally maiming another for the benefit of some other party. If done out of altruism, it is well. But if it reduced to a mere economic matter, then the desperately poor will be forced by circumstances into doing it. We know this from the experience of mass castration in China in order to serve as a court eunuch to prevent one's family from starving. The rich will always use their wealth to extract behavior out of the poor - but there has to be limits on that.
On the other hand, when it comes to things like drinking alcohol, dancing or private sexual behavior - moral issues to many - I am not willing to have a heavy set of laws to enforce pure morality. My reasoning is straightforward: people will not obey those laws, they are too restrictive. Once you get a population accustomed to casually breaking the laws, they will, and you'll have a society that is worse than if you didn't have those laws.
Save the big guns of law for the things that matter most, like not killing babies, or old people - economically it makes perfect sense to euthanize retirees when they develop any terminal illness - and not harvesting organs for the primary benefit of the upper class.
On the other hand, when it comes to things like drinking alcohol, dancing or private sexual behavior - moral issues to many - I am not willing to have a heavy set of laws to enforce pure morality.
I agree. But in return, I do not want my tax dollars used to treat the consequences of that behavior.
Ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Fine by me. Ride nude for all I care. But get a concussion after an accident? You're on your own. You will not be treated unless you can pay.
