Kidney_Donation

-1 When organ donations are discussed, many people may think of the tiny red heart they put on driver’s license declaring them a donor. People who are familiar with the organ donations know they occur postmortem. Unfortunately, even with approximately half the United States population choosing to donate organs, there is still a critical shortage of organs for transplant. Many views are held regarding the restrictions that should be placed on live organ donations, or if it should be legal at all. All across the country there is a great demand for organs, and not enough people willing to donate. With the understanding of the shortage there now needs to be a solution. Although Bruce Gottlieb’s “How much for that Kidney In the Window” and Gilbert Meilaender’s “Strip-Mining the Dead: When Human Organs are for Sale” both have a strong view about the selling of organs, Gottlieb offer’s a more logical viewpoint on the subject. One solution may be to remove the ban on human body parts. The selling of organs has become a much disputed subject in society and there are several concerns regarding this matter. One concern with legalizing the sale of kidneys is that it will give an unfair advantage to the wealthy and exploit the poor and underprivileged. The problem here may be that the poor may feel the need to sell a kidney to pay for food, car payment, or rent whereas the rich or wealthier people may have no need to sell their kidney. This change would make people feel that offering money would exploit the poor while long-term benefits would go only to the wealthy. There is no solution to poverty, but taking away people’s opportunities economically is not the way to solve the problem, argues Bruce Gottlieb (505). Why does the government get to decide what we spend our money on' Or what we get to sell' Supporting legalization of kidney sales is based upon autonomy, which is personal interdependence to make moral decisions and to act on them. In other words, supporters feel people have the ethical right to sell their organs because it’s their body and life. Besides, live organ donations can be better harvested and the donors and recipients can be better matched (504). In a ideal world, there would be no destitute people, and there would be enough altruistic donors so that no one would die while waiting to receive a kidney. We must make policies for the real world, not an ideal one. Arguments against legalizing kidney sales is the concern of leading to human bodies being considered merely articles of trade or being reduced to a commodity. The buying and selling of organs would make the body seem more as an object that we can dispose and do whatever we want with, as long as the price is good enough says Gilbert Meilaender (508). If you can go through all the testing and be a match for someone, and are willing to do so then you should donate. As for selling organs that just gives people more incentive to find extra body parts they may not need. Legalizing a market in kidneys would have a positive outcome in society. The number of donors would likely increase, lives would be saved, and donors would be recognized for their service through payment or another means of compensation. Alternate forms of compensation could be reimbursement for funeral expenses, or maybe even organ exchanges. Furthermore, autonomy is one of the highest regarded values of our society and should not be undermined. An improved system for providing organs for transplant would be necessary at this time and a better way to provide more organs for transplant would be through legalizing the market. Legalizing kidneys would save lives and promote helping the community.