Paying to live

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:43:15 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

The Economist - people own their bodies. They should be able to sell their organs if they want. Especially kidneys, the transplant of which allow both donor and recipient to continue living.

It is odd that we consider this ethical dilemma when presented with the idea of organ sales, yet largely ignore it when considering similar transactions. What is so different about paying a young man for his kidney and paying him to go off to war or perform any number of jobs that harm his health? All rely, to some extent, on the desperation of the lower-class. In the mid-2000s, as the Iraq war reached its bloody peak, the Pentagon recruited heavily in economically depressed areas. And black-lunged coal miners are rarely the sons of millionaires. Yet there is something icky about organ sales that seems to set it apart.

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... Donations are also cost-effective. As we noted in a previous report on the topic, "the cost of one kidney operation and a lifetime's supply of anti-rejection drugs equals that of three years' dialysis." And we have proof that such systems do fill the needs of the ill. Iran adopted a system of paying kidney donors in 1988 and within 11 years it became the only country in the world to clear its waiting list for transplants.

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