• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Should you or your family members be able to sell your organs post mortem?

Should a person or that person's family be able to sell their organs post mortem?


  • Total voters
    35
There's a reason you lost that debate, and that post is a good example.

The prostitution angle is a tangent on this thread, so don't expect an in-depth discussion on prostitution here.

I didn't "lose" any debate. There WAS no debate. I stopped typing up responses to you because you refused to respond to them appropriately. I LEFT the one sided conversation I was having with a wall. Finally stopping beating your head against a wall doesn't mean the wall "won". :lol: I made the mistake of actually thinking I was entering a debate where someone was actually going to type out reasoned and logical responses to what I was typing, and vice versa. When I realized that wasn't the case, and instead I was having a one side convo with a search engine that brings up irrelevant results, I closed the browser window. ;)
 
Last edited:
All the more reason to legalize the trade. Hospitals could certainly protect the organs (and match buyers/sellers) much more easily than, say, some guy with an ice chest in his van.

So you would ask doctors and hospitals to use their resources to become a financial market for private buyers/sellers of organs? The moral argument thickens. As a doctor I would picket government offices night and day to prevent such a thing from happening.

In any case, a legal organ market will still increase the supply, because presumably SOME people will be willing to sell who were not willing to donate. And demand will stay pretty much the same, as there will still be the same number of people who need a new organ.

You still haven't addressed two things:

1) Sourcing - controlling the sources of organs. Since the black market for organs is not really present in, say, North America, I would foresee it being created once a price incentive for organs exists. You promote hospitals as the middle men, but that's unethical from every medical standpoint I can think of. Give me a better option.
2) Pricing - while you are correct about the nature of supply, I don't think it could apply to organs. Just because all people have organs, does not mean there is a liquid supply. Also, organs have a shelf life of about a day or less. There is nothing to prevent price gouging since there would be insufficient awareness of all available organs at all times to create an equilibrium price.

Not if the market was broad enough. If there are 1000 people in your geographical area who need an organ, and 1000 people willing to donate them, the price will eventually settle at the market equilibrium rather than the whim of any individual seller.

In order for the market to reach sufficient broadness, there would have to be laws or at least legal incentives coercing more people into donating organs beyond current levels, and I would be against this on religious grounds.

You can't determine market equilibrium prices on a good that goes bad in less than 24 hours, you can only rely on approximate pricing. Desperation would increase prices because sellers could knowingly gouge these people. In a normal supply/demand scenario, they would just go look for a cheaper alternative, but what if their relative is dying and needs it now? They would get gouged. It's unethical.

Legalization of the body parts trade is one type of legalization that would increase criminal behaviors. Once you add a price tag to organs people will do all manner of things to obtain them, and no institution, government or hospitals, will be able to stop all underground activity. They can't stop drugs or prostitution, how would they stop underground medical labs? Those labs won't exist if there is no domestic price for organs. Period.

But like I told Jerry, if the black market dealers don't want to participate in the legal organ market anyway, then they aren't really relevant to the discussion.

Except for the fact that there is no black market in somewhere like the U.S. There will be if you start an organ market.

Besides, who would their customers be? While I can understand the incentive for the dealers themselves to not want to participate, why would any potential BUYER choose to buy from them instead of a reputable hospital if they had the choice?

Hospitals are not an adequate example of legal enforcement. Hospitals are not police or government and should never be put in that position. Their job is healing above all else. We all took the Hippocratic oath.

There's already an incentive to sell them through nefarious means. This would simply create a fair-means channel.

See past comments on the lack of a black market in the U.S.

Why isn't there any way to track organ sourcing? Bob decides to sell his kidney and goes to St. Mary's Hospital. The doctor extracts it, carefully labels where/who it came from and includes all the relevant medical data. It is then sent on its merry way to whomever the buyer is. The doctor at that hospital has access to all of the information, and can call Bob's doctor if he has any questions about it.

And what is the doctor's opportunity cost for engaging in that transaction? He could be helping another patient who isn't there for financial gain but actually needs dire treatment. You are asking the doctor to be a middle man in a financial transaction. It's unethical.

This would prevent the deaths of thousands of people each year on organ waitlists.

And the untold suffering created once the illegal underground is generated out of such a market?

What's the difference if someone earns $25 for selling blood plasma twice a week over the course of 6 years, or earns $15,000 for selling a kidney once in their life? Neither the blood plasma nor the extra kidney is doing them any good, but they could use the cash and someone else could use the plasma/kidney.

You can't regenerate a kidney. Blood is regenerated within 48 hours max. It's why I have no issue with the sale of plasma because there is always more. The supply is, basically, unlimited.

Those horror stories from India and Brazil have less to do with an organ market, and more to do with weakly enforced standards in hospitals and contract law. Any American hospital doing such things would be shut down.

Your whole premise functions on hospitals doing the legal enforcing. See last points.

The doctor's responsibility is exactly the same whether it's being donated or sold: Withdraw the organ, store it safely, and/or put it in the person who needs it.

There could be a person on dialysis on the other end who needs the kidney but is informed of the price tag and can't afford it. It would place the medical system in the position of having a "priced organs" list and a "donated organs" list. Why would people donate when their families can just sell their body once they are dead? Which is worse, a waiting list for free or a price tag you can't afford?

I mean really. Look at the slippery slope factor here. It's not so neat and tidy.

A couple of key distinctions:

1. There is no clear victim from an organ sale transaction, whereas there is a clear victim in child prostitution.

Selling a live body or selling a dead body is the same: selling of bodies.

2. The black market for child prostitution mostly consists of buyers whose needs cannot be met in Amsterdam's legal prostitution market. There is no analogous market for organ buyers, whose needs could not be met by a reputable hospital. Why would anyone choose the black market over the legal market in that case?

Because the legal market will always create barriers that the black market can bypass. In your hypothetical situation where the hospital controls the transaction, they would definitely charge fees for that. Someone could bypass those fees by going to an organ dealer. What if someone shows up to a hospital with a black market organ and wants the transplant? Does the hospital say no because it was obtained illegally, even though it's a perfectly good organ and they'll likely never be able to return it to the source in time?

I don't think a legal organ market will solve the shortages, it would simply reduce them while creating a host of other problems.
 
With the supply of useable organs limited, should a person or that person's family be able to sell their organs after they have died?

Please answer with why or why not.

Not sell, but spend! The most difficult question is theological, but if you know, your organ can save other live.....
 
With the supply of useable organs limited, should a person or that person's family be able to sell their organs after they have died?

Please answer with why or why not.

I say yes but with restrictions-

1.Organ must come from the same country as recipient. In other words no exporting or importing organs. This is to ensure that poor people in other countries are not exploited by richer countries.

2.The organ donor/organ donor's family must not know the recipient or the recipient's family and or associates and doctors and vise versa, unless of course the donor and recipient are close relatives.Even make sure the labs doing the compatibility not know who the recipient and donors are. So the selling of organs should be done by an anonymous as possible. This is to ensure that no one can exploit or extort the other for organs.

3.No organs of suicides and perhaps murder victims accepted. This is to ensure that no desperate person just offs himself or tries to have someone off him just because he wants his kids or wife to have a house.

4. There must no coerced(as a condition for a service received, job and or license requirement, incarceration and etc) or forced database of compatible matches. The right to privacy is important. There should be a law that would make it s criminal offense to make a coerced or forced database of compatible matches and a law making it illegal for a politician to try to reduced penalties or trying to make it legal.

5. Make it illegal to force and or coerce anyone to become a organ donor.

6.Make sure the doctors who do transplants are not way in any shape or form associated with doctors who regularly perform operations on organ donors to alleviate any fears that the doctor might be looking at you like a new Lexus and therefore might be inclined to tell your family that you didn't make it or that you slipped into a vegetative state.

7.Any sales or transactions must be done at the consent of the organ donor himself.The organ donor must sign a a will stating not only which organs he wants to sell should be die but who gets the proceeds.


If someone can profit from transplanting your organ into someone else then surely you should be able to profit as well.
 
Back
Top Bottom