Your organs are a valuable commodity: except to you.
I have wondered for years why folks are not allowed to sell tissue or other non-essential body parts while they are alive, or have their parts sold and the proceeds made part of their estate when they're dead. If the actual donors were allowed to profit, rather than just the hospitals, suppliers, and recipients, people wouldn't be on waiting lists for years and we wouldn't see an underground black market (disturbing funeral home thefts).
Creating a marketplace for organs/tissues would probably result in an immense increase in the available materials: that would be good for everyone, and the enlarged supply might even result in a reduced price (even with the cost of paying the donor factored in). Right now, it is acceptable for everybody to profit from organ transplants EXCEPT the person who has kindly decided to donate a part of themselves. Pay people to go onto donor lists or to give up extraneous organs/tissue, or agree to compensate their heirs, and you'll see more donors.
Without entering into a philosophical/religious debate about the need to honor the wishes of the deceased, our society has a mountain of legal precedent devoted to the idea that people may generally dispose of their assets after their demise in the manner they see fit. A human body contains (as horrible as this sounds...) numerous valuable assets. Just as people can choose to spend money on their tomb, casket, funeral arrangements, etc...they can also choose to let their bodily assets go with them into eternity. I'm not a fan of forcing people to become organ donors. Let them keep their organs if the price isn't right.
Is this selfish? Maybe, but in a capitalist society we do not force people to do for others without their consent (and, usually, money). In short, people are allowed to be "selfish pricks". Unless one typically offers his money, clothing, and housing to anyone who needs it, he should go a little easier on those who decide not to give parts of themselves away for free.
Another question is market regulation: people seem to envision these shadowy corporations springing into existence whose sole purpose is to hunt down organs from the poor for the benefit of the wealthy. This seem far-fetched. When there is money to be made and lives to be saved, the market demonstrates an incredible ability to self-organize (with regulatory help from the government); I doubt we'd see anything different in the organ market. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and adoptions are all highly regulated markets in which free exchanges are tightly controlled and in which many desired transactions are denied. Surprise, surprise, a black market forms! Similarly, in the highly regulated and tightly controlled tissue/organ market we also see a black market. That shouldn't be surprising. When the government steps in and tries to prevent desired transactions from occuring an illegitimate market is a foregone conclusion.
What if at your next doctor's visit, you were told that you would receive a few hundred dollars if you registered your genetic makeup into a database. If someone needed a donation later, you could be called and an offer could be made to buy your bone marrow (a relatively simple procedure)? We could virtually end deaths due to insufficient marrow, organs, etc.
Some interesting articles:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/econo...te-ro-sell.htm (well-reasoned article)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/murphy-s2.html (detailed list of the usual objections, and why they're wrong)
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ar..._the_purc.html
http://www.jhhuebert.com/articles/organs.html
http://www.globalideasbank.org/creend/CRE-17.HTML
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ne..._expert.htm l
Creating a marketplace for organs/tissues would probably result in an immense increase in the available materials: that would be good for everyone, and the enlarged supply might even result in a reduced price (even with the cost of paying the donor factored in). Right now, it is acceptable for everybody to profit from organ transplants EXCEPT the person who has kindly decided to donate a part of themselves. Pay people to go onto donor lists or to give up extraneous organs/tissue, or agree to compensate their heirs, and you'll see more donors.
Without entering into a philosophical/religious debate about the need to honor the wishes of the deceased, our society has a mountain of legal precedent devoted to the idea that people may generally dispose of their assets after their demise in the manner they see fit. A human body contains (as horrible as this sounds...) numerous valuable assets. Just as people can choose to spend money on their tomb, casket, funeral arrangements, etc...they can also choose to let their bodily assets go with them into eternity. I'm not a fan of forcing people to become organ donors. Let them keep their organs if the price isn't right.
Is this selfish? Maybe, but in a capitalist society we do not force people to do for others without their consent (and, usually, money). In short, people are allowed to be "selfish pricks". Unless one typically offers his money, clothing, and housing to anyone who needs it, he should go a little easier on those who decide not to give parts of themselves away for free.
Another question is market regulation: people seem to envision these shadowy corporations springing into existence whose sole purpose is to hunt down organs from the poor for the benefit of the wealthy. This seem far-fetched. When there is money to be made and lives to be saved, the market demonstrates an incredible ability to self-organize (with regulatory help from the government); I doubt we'd see anything different in the organ market. Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and adoptions are all highly regulated markets in which free exchanges are tightly controlled and in which many desired transactions are denied. Surprise, surprise, a black market forms! Similarly, in the highly regulated and tightly controlled tissue/organ market we also see a black market. That shouldn't be surprising. When the government steps in and tries to prevent desired transactions from occuring an illegitimate market is a foregone conclusion.
What if at your next doctor's visit, you were told that you would receive a few hundred dollars if you registered your genetic makeup into a database. If someone needed a donation later, you could be called and an offer could be made to buy your bone marrow (a relatively simple procedure)? We could virtually end deaths due to insufficient marrow, organs, etc.
Some interesting articles:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/econo...te-ro-sell.htm (well-reasoned article)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/murphy-s2.html (detailed list of the usual objections, and why they're wrong)
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ar..._the_purc.html
http://www.jhhuebert.com/articles/organs.html
http://www.globalideasbank.org/creend/CRE-17.HTML
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ne..._expert.htm l
posted by O.C. Mike at
2:56 PM
2 Comments:
Great post. I completely agree. I just read something about a supreme court case where a doctor was treating this guy over a period of years and kept telling him he needed tissue samples. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the guy, the doctor was creating some kind of incredibly valuable biomedical product using the guy's cells. The guy sued and lost, I think, because you can't sell your body parts. Except semen and eggs? I don't get it. If you haven't already read that, ask Shark about the case that BMK12000 linked to.
That's the Moore v. UC Regents case. I posted about it in Shark's thread: I find it to be the worst reasoned case of all time.
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