Organs for Sale

The idea of allowing people to sell organs is at first distasteful - at least to me. The rich have the obvious advantage, being able to pay. The poor would be exploited perhaps being "forced" to sell organs through the pressure to get the money. Clearly, making organ purchasing legal has its negatives. But our current system isn't working. About 100,000 people are on the waiting list for organs with a new name added every 12 minutes and 18 names removed each day (18 dead a day).

The strange thing: About 75,000 of those are waiting for a kidney. You only need one kidney. The implication is obvious. Normal, healthy people should be donating a kidney to those who need them, whether related to the person or not, whether knowing the person or not. Doing this is called a Living Donation. It seems radical: I just walk into the hospital and say, "Hey, uh, I'm fine, but I'd really like to donate a kidney. Do you have someone on the waiting list who is a match?"

It takes a special kind of person to go through the pain and risk of surgery to donate a kidney, anonymously, to someone he/she doesn't even know. And of course this means it doesn't happen often. But if we started paying for organs - the way we pay for blood, plasma, and semen - the line coming in to that hospital for Living Donations would be a bit longer.

More than likely the cost of a kidney would be a bit higher than a cupfull of semen (obviously semen is a renewable resource whereas the kidney is not....oh and the process of donation from a kidney to semen is remarkably different). So yes, maybe rich people would be getting first crack at the kidney.

But - we would be removing the wealthy from that list of 75000 people who need a kidney, making a smaller list, so the number of organs which become available through natural means (um yeah I mean the death of an organ donor) will at least come closer to equaling the number of people on the list.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a side note, everyone in Illinois should head over to https://www.ilsos.gov/organdonorregister/ and sign up to become an organ donor. Registering through First-Person Consent means that your family can not negate your decision to become an organ donor, so even if you've checked the box on your driver's license, you should still register online.

Not being an organ donor is just inconsiderate and ignorant.