Many of the arguments advanced by those in support of organ sales are actually valid: the choice is substantially indistinguishable from other choices permitted for different reasons; and any addition on donor organs to the very tight "market" of available donor organs would likely mean that one additional organ would become available to other potential recipients. However, the principal argument against the permissibility of selling donor organs is not the denial of those admitted benefits. Rather, it is a function of the inevitable consequences of wealth disparity and the traditional economic principles of supply and demand. Moreover, the fact that organ sales are permissible in other countries provides an opportunity to observe the actual consequences of that permissibility.
Precisely because donor organs for transplant are in such critically short supply, they would command a high price that only the wealthy could afford to pay. Since selling an organ is a considerably desperate means of earning income, only the relatively poor would choose to do so. This sets up a social and economic dynamic that exposes the poor to exploitation by the wealthy. This is precisely the situation that has already occurred in countries where organ sales are legal: in many cases, the organs of the desperately poor are purchased by the wealthy for the equivalent of only a few months' pay or even less (Levine, 2008). Beyond the natural economic dynamics of the market for donor organs, the poorest members of society would be especially vulnerable to exploitation by virtue of their comparatively lower literacy rates, education,...
In theory, such evaluations could be useful, but as is, they are fairly useless. Plus, the validity and necessity of evaluations are up for debate themselves, besides the actual results from the evaluations being up for debate. Thus, the bioethical dilemma in those who abuse their bodies before and after receiving organ transplants lies not necessarily just with the recipients, but also with society, and with the medical field with
Ethical Considerations Behind Organ Transplants The idea of organ transplants has suffered several criticisms over the years from the civil society, to the various religious groups and even philosophers. It is challenging to have one perspective on the idea of transplants and apply it universally since not everyone will share the religious view, or the philosophical view. In the context of this memorandum, the utilitarian philosophy will be the baseline for
In the U.S. For instance, Abuona (2003) indicated that the very first criterion is the donor's geographic location as compared to that of the recipient followed by the histocompatibility matching and blood group compatibility. The third criterion is a point system that each of the waiting-list patients accumulate in regard to the following variables; waiting time, medical urgency, as well as the age of the patient. This allocation technique
Organ Transplantation Denying Mrs. Burgone the organ transplant could be ethically justified under certain conditions and circumstances. However, denying her organ transplantation surgery under these circumstances is not one of those instances and cannot be ethically justified. The decision is arbitrary and serves no purpose for any stakeholders in the outcome of the issue. Moreover, the ethical justification purported to be at the heart of the decision is logically flawed and
Transplant Medicine The Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) contains over 128 functional genes. This is the densest part of the human genome and is responsible for most autoimmune diseases. This region also determines vaccine responsiveness, adverse drug reactions, disease progression and transplant rejection. The MHC genes are multigenic with a high degree of allelic polymorphism. There are over 7,500 different alleles and over 5,458 expressed MHC antigens currently known. (DeFranco, Locksley &
Organ Donation Why Organ Donating is a Social Responsibility Life is a sentence. It begins with a capital letter, has something in between, and then a punctuation mark at the end. Organ donation allows part of our physical body to be of use to someone else for short time after we have passed. It is a beautiful gift to be able to make someone else's life a little longer. This gives them
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