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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
CaptainCourtesy said:
This is why donation should be mandatory. The dead have no use for their organs after they are dead. The dead have no rights, either. Make donation mandatory and supply goes way up.
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did you know Mon Capitan that the Spanish, if they lose a limb before they die it is kept for the burial.
 
B L Zeebub said:
did you know Mon Capitan that the Spanish, if they lose a limb before they die it is kept for the burial.
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No, I didn't. In know in the Civil War, some general buried his amputated leg and had a tombstone put on it.
 
EpicDude86 said:
Stonewall Jackson was buried in one place, his amputated arm in another.
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I know, but it wasn't him. Happened at Gettysburg. Can't remember the General's name. I think he was on the Union side.
 
Orius said:
Legalizing it would increase the likelihood of more people who would turn to organs for monetary gain, through corrupt channels. You can't use standard supply and demand when looking at organs. They have an extremely short viability rate outside of the body, which means tracking the total supply at any given time would be difficult;
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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.

Orius said:
secondly, organs in peoples' bodies do not count as part of the supply, because willingness to donate and be actively doing so would have to be considered.
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Normally things count as part of the supply even if the owner isn't particularly inclined to sell them (unless of course it's something that CAN'T be sold or if the owner is unwilling to sell at ANY price).

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.

Orius said:
Given that, determining price would be at the whim of the seller, and likely in accordance with the desperation of the individual. It would be market rape, not market "forces".
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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.

(Granted, that's a bit of an oversimplification since not every seller will be compatible with every buyer, but the general principle applies.)

Orius said:
Finally, it doesn't create any new safe guards placed on the sourcing of organs. Okay, so you could make it mandatory that certification is needed before harvesting organs, to ensure consent, etc. But all that would do is facilitate the continued existence of the black market, which has no desire to do that.
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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.

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?

Orius said:
But it does so in a way that is corruption-free, and is controlled by medical professionals. Removing the organ itself can lead to life-threatening complications from the donor, let alone transplanting it and avoiding infection and rejection. Legalization would not ensure safe practices, it would simply incentivize the selling of organs through all means, fair and nefarious alike.
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There's already an incentive to sell them through nefarious means. This would simply create a fair-means channel.

Orius said:
Then the medical system should be lobbied in a democratic way to refine its standards, such as increasing availability to people in certain age groups, and by educating the public on organ donation.
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It's been my experience that public education campaigns almost never work as well as a cash incentive.

Orius said:
I am just thinking about the victims if we openly allow organ selling. Legalization is not the solution. People will always find ways to profit more.

There is virtually no way to track organ sourcing - post-mortem or living donor - which is the whole point of why selling organs remains illegal. By making it legal we are basically giving the organ thieves the okay to bring their business out into the open.
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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.

Orius said:
People who are extorted seldom run to the law. What if you were asked to give a kidney to repay a huge loan you owed? To keep your house? To immigrate to a better country? Yes, these things could happen already, by legalization means we are saying it's okay.
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Not if there were laws making it illegal for creditors to require/"encourage" debtors to sell organs to repay debt.

Orius said:
Medicine is about healing, not helping people make ends meet in such a grotesque way.
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This would prevent the deaths of thousands of people each year on organ waitlists.

Orius said:
I can think of one example that contradicts this, which is some blood banks give you money for donating your blood, but that's because of shortages in some areas.
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There is a nationwide shortage of kidneys.

Orius said:
Besides, blood regenerates within less than a day.
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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.

Orius said:
As I said earlier, medical institutions can't possibly track the source if it's coming from outside of their walls. Hell, even sometimes in their walls, there is abuse:
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I really don't see why it would be so difficult to track where it was coming from, if hospitals were required to label them.

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.

Orius said:
Even though it can still happen in areas with low enforcement, at least keeping it within the confines of medical diagnostic criteria tends to make it fair, balanced, and monitored. Once you put a price tag on the organs, that places an unfair burden on doctors to facilitate not only a life saving transaction, but a financial transaction.
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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.

Orius said:
I equate this to prostitution being legalized in Amsterdam. Yes, you can hire a hooker, but what if you have a special interest in children? It's still illegal there, but the black market services it. Should we make that legal too, since the demand is there? At some point the morals of society have to step in and say no, even if money is to be made.
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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.

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?
 
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I am still searching for Napoleons penis, its my holy grail.
 
B L Zeebub said:
not even a part of you, metaphorically of course;)
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I used my time displacement device to watch the Battle of Gettysburg once, but I was over on Little Round Top. I think his leg was amputated and buried down at the Wheatfield. :2razz:
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
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.
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Only with their consent.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
I know, but it wasn't him. Happened at Gettysburg. Can't remember the General's name. I think he was on the Union side.
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neither can I but he changed his name by deed pole to General Thad Hurt
 
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Jerry said:
No, it creates an underground organ market as the demand far surpasses the supply. What you end up with are people killed for their organs.

Yes, it's your body, but your choice has far-reaching overwhelmingly negative and harmful affects on others, and so your choice should be restricted.
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A black market for organs does exist.
 
Jerry said:
Disproving absolutes...

Google

So easy even a cave-man can do it.
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geico_l.jpg

**** YOU, JERRY! *** YOU!



:lol:
 
I think I will start a black market organ transplant restaurant called " Silence of the Glands"
 
Kandahar said:
Yes, they absolutely should. In fact, people should be able to sell their organs while they're still alive, as long as it's an organ they don't need to survive (such as an extra kidney).

The fact is that organ donation is a nice idea, but the fact that there is such a shortage of widely available organs indicates that it simply does not work. Introducing market incentives would be a HUGE improvement, and would make both the buyer and seller much better off than they would be without the transaction.
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Oh hell no! If this were to happen how many people would be killed in order to harvest those organs to sell em?

I may not need my organs after I die but that doesn't mean that I want my body desecrated.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
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.
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There are already strong impetus to harvest organs in situations other than brain death - there is some discussion in relation to cardiac death being a criteria - and to be honest THAT makes me shudder
 
Orius said:
I would be against the monetization of people's bodies for the soul reason that it would provide incentive for more organ thefts to take place. As it stands, organs do not cost money. It is a needs-based system. I can only imagine the corruption that would take place if we allowed people to buy them. And let's not even think about how classism would factor into that.

No way.
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"Soul reason?" You object on religious grounds?!
 
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