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.