Transplant Surgeons Want Sales of Human Organs

If it helps assure that they can do more surgeries, top transplant surgeons are quite happy to advocate the sale of human organs.

by Heidi Stevenson

5 January 2011

Top UK surgeons are calling for the sale of human organs for transplants. Their macabre proposition is couched as ethically necessary to avoid what they term "transplant tourism". They contend that it would prevent people from going overseas to obtain transplant surgery, which they imply is inferior. A suggested sales price is £50,000-100,000. Whether better quality organs should receive a higher price is left unstated.

According to the Independent, John Harris, an ethicist at the University of Manchester, says:

Being paid doesn't nullify altruism. Doctors aren't less caring because they are paid. With the current system everyone gets paid except the donor.⁽¹⁾

Apparently, being an ethicist has little to do with being ethical.

He doesn't explain what a doctor's altruism has to do with the issue of organ donation—and he doesn't note that the patient receiving an organ neither pays nor gets paid. Most significant, though, is that he ignores the real issue: Who would the paid donors be?

Let's be frank. If you are wealthy, are you going to consider selling a kidney for £50,000-100,000, the amount suggested? It's obvious, a real no-brainer, that only the desperately poor will sell their organs, that only abject poverty would push someone to even consider it. If there's no consideration of that fact, then the argument for organ sales is corrupt.

As it stands now, we're horrified at the spectre of organ sales in other countries. According to BBC, in April 2006 "top British transplant surgeons condemned the practice [of using executed prisoners' organs] as unacceptable and a breach of human rights."⁽²⁾ Exactly how does the use of organs purchased from desperate people differ ethically from the use of condemned prisoners' organs?

Would these same doctors advocate the use of prisoners' organs if execution were legal in the UK? It certainly doesn't seem to be any different morally than the sale of organs. Yet, it was "top British transplant surgeons" who both condemned the Chinese practice of using prisoners' organs and advocate the use of the organs of poverty-stricken people.

Professor Sir Peter Bell, former vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons, has a rather crass view of the issue. He says:

If someone wants to alleviate a financial problem why shouldn't he do that? It's his choice.⁽¹⁾

Really? Would you want someone with that attitude operating on you? If that's how he values a human being who's poor, what's his view of a piece of flesh lying on an operating table in front of him?

Do you really want a doctor who supports organ sales doing surgery on your body?

*****************************************************************************

What do you think? Click here to comment!

*****************************************************************************

Search Gaia Health: