Selling The Inside of Yourself
The illegal sales of human organs on the black markets have been happening for decades. The usage of these organs being sold are still in question, but some are used for good, like being used to transplant for the sick and in need. Another question is to legalize the sale of human organs through the government. Even though people who cannot afford organs may not be able to get them, it should be legal to sell human organs because it can save lives and it can provide financial stability.
Waiting for an organ transplant can take a few days, to a few months, to a year, or more if one can make it that long. According to Mark J. Cherry, “In the United States, more than 44,308 patients died while waiting for an organ transplants from 1992 through 2001. An additional 6,385 patients died in 2002, and 6,509 in 2003” (Cherry). As time goes on, more and more people need a transplant. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) as of right now 118,103 people need a transplant, and 22 people die each day waiting for a transplant (unos.org). These numbers could go down if the government made the sale of human organs legal. As most people may or may not know there are people selling their organs such as kidneys on the “dark web”, which is basically an underground internet where people sell drugs, child porn, people, and other illegal things. It turns out that the illegal organ trade isn’t such a new thing and has been going on since the 80’s and possibly even earlier.
Organ trafficking is considered human trafficking in the eyes of the law. According to author Dianne Small-Jordan who wrote Organ Harvesting, Human Trafficking, And The Black Market, the United States is one of the top organ-importing nations through the internet in the world (decodedscience.org). There are also many mysterious deaths each year of people dying and having their organs removed all around the United States, which have some investigators very concerned. There is always a need for healthy organs and once people have waited too long for a healthy organ through UNOS they will go to any length and pay any price to get what they need for themselves or their loved ones, this includes killing to save a life.
If the government made it legal to buy and sell human organs, crime rates could go down, but there could be a few downsides to making such a law legal. One of the major concerns of making a law like organ sale legal is the fact of morality. Is it morally right to sell human organs? Do we really own our bodies? Some could argue that if we have the right to abort an unborn child then we should have the right to sell our healthy organs for profit. Some also could argue that it is prostitution to sell our organs. To become an organ donor is a very big decision for some, but for others it is no question at all. So why is it so hard to decide to sell human organs or not?
A concern for making the sale of human organs legal through the government could also be illegal immigration. Making the sale of human organs in the United States could cause the number of illegal immigrants to skyrocket in this country. If the United States were to make organ sale legal, many immigrants could come to the US illegally just to sell their organs which could be unhealthy. If these illegal immigrants were to come in and sell their organs for profit, they could bring over a disease that is uncommon in the United States and possibly cause an outbreak or death to the person they sold their organ too. This can be avoided by making organ sales in the US available only to citizens of the US and nobody that is not a citizen can buy or sell an organ that is not a citizen.
Another problem that making organ sales legal can cause is human trafficking for profit. Just like the human sex trade, people who buy and sell girls for sex and drugs could eventually start buying and selling girls who have the best health so they can sell their organs to make a profit off of them. This can sound extremely far fetched but it is not out of the realm of possibility. For example, if a girl is taken and kept in captivity long enough, she will develop stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome is defined by the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary as feeling love and affection towards your kidnapper or abuser (merriam-webster.com). If someone were to develop stockholm syndrome and brought to a hospital to sell their organs and told by their kidnapper that they had to do it, they would, even though it is considered abuse and a crime. After their organs are sold and the surgery is over, the abuser could just kill the girl when they are done with them and they get their money.
One thing that could very easily happen if the selling of organs was made legal in the United States is that drug users and other people who may not have a healthy lifestyle could sign up to sell their organs to gain money to support their unhealthy lifestyles. This could cause concern for many people, but things like this could be easily monitored and avoided. To be on the UNOS list, the patient has to meet various specifications, and someone’s place on the list can change at any moment depending on how sick they are etc. Just like the UNOS list and the various specifications one has to meet to get on the list, selling organs could be just the same. Just like donating blood, there are screening tests done to see if there are any blood born diseases that one may have or anything along those lines. To donate organs, there are a series of blood tests and scans that one can do to avoid any possible problems from lifestyle choices to unknown, untreated, or asymptomatic diseases in a paid donor. Although these tests can be expensive, the government could also possibly conform a program to get healthcare to pay for these tests for the organ donation and screening process.
One big question that cannot be ignored is the question of age. How old should can a donor be to volunteer for paid organ donation? Just like joining the army, or maybe even drinking the legal age for paid organ donation in the United States could be 18 or 21. This could also avoid the problem of parents putting their child’s organs up for sale against their will, or parents procreating just to sell their child’s organs.
There may be a few concerns to legalizing the sale of human organs in America, but there are also many upsides to the legalization of the sale of human organs. The main benefit for the legalization of the selling of organs is obviously saving people’s lives. There are only two countries in the world where the buying and selling of organs is legal in the entire world and that is Iran and the Philippines. According to Lindsey Wagner in her article Organ Trafficking: More Than Just a Myth in 2008 the Philippines banned the sale of organs due to international pressure and the passage of the Declaration of Istanbul (law.utah.edu). In these two countries, there was no organ transplant waiting list and the people who sold their organs to the government received free health insurance and around $2,000 to $4,000 as payment for a kidney which is the most transplanted organ globally.
By legalizing the sale of human organs can not only help people stay alive but it can also bring people out of poverty stricken states. Even though people won’t be making the apparent millions like they would be on the black market for their organs, they could get paid in other ways such as free healthcare, like Iran. This could help people and families sufficiently. The government spends millions on healthcare and its policies each year. Instead of spending the millions on trying to get people to eat better or live a better life, the millions they could be spending to pay people to donate their organs could motivate people to be healthy. The money people and free healthcare people could receive for their organ donation could encourage them to live a healthier lifestyle, which could also help solve America’s obesity crisis.
Many people who are in critical need of a new organ are hospital bound and are living in the hospital from weeks, to months at a time. The hospital bills add up very, very quickly, this obviously leads to debt. If the sale of organs were to be legalized this would immediately help the families of those who need transplants financially by getting their loved ones out of the hospital. Not only are their loved ones getting the transplant they so desperately needed but they are also getting out of the hospital that has been draining them of all their money. This helps the financial crisis that any Americans face today. The sales of organs not only will help the financial needs of the families, but it could also help the market.
When it comes to sick children, parents try their best, but when there are multiple children involved this can become a problem, especially when the younger child isn’t a match for the older child. Some parents could feel resentment towards their younger child for not being a match for their older child, which in a few cases could cause a parent to completely neglect their child or even abandon them. With the sales of organs available, parents might not resent their other children, or even each other for not being a match for their sick child.
To sell or not to sell human organs in the United States is a very sensitive and moral question that will likely be left unanswered for some years to come. It is true that “the shortage of transplant organs is a worldwide problem (plato.stanford.edu) things will still not change due to the pure fact or morality. There are many factors and questions that go into making such an act into a legal effect. What does not help the decision making process is that only two other countries in the world have tried this law and out of the two only one still has the law in effect. Although the other country still has success with the law and its proceedings, there are still other moral questions to be answered. The biggest question of all is will America legalize selling the inside of ourselves? Especially considering it is in fact to save someone else.