Should a person be allowed to sell a kidney?

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It is difficult for many people to see a moral issue with people selling organs. As long as the organ sale would not endanger the seller or anyone else, there appears to be no issue with this sale. People already sell blood plasma and this is not an ethical debate. Besides, if people were allowed to sell kidneys this would allow for larger numbers of people to be saved from dying because of lack of organs. There is also another consideration for organ selling. This is the idea of improving the scientific process. Because organ transplants are costly and difficult to obtain this reduces the amount of knowledge that can be gained from human organ transplant practices. If selling organs were allowed, then medical science would be able to advance its best practices and refine its systems for transplanting. Another argument for legalizing organ selling comes from the fact that there is already a black market for this commodity which does not take into account any ethics. Currently, there are suggested methods for overseeing the organ sale process:

One approach to expanding the pool of kidney donors is to legalize payment of a fair market price of about $40 000 to donors. Establishing a federal agency to manage marketing and purchase of donor kidneys in collaboration with the United Network for Organ Sharing might be financially self-sustaining as reduction in costs of dialysis balances the expense of payment to donors (Friedman & Friedman, 2006).

References

Friedman, A., & Friedman, A. L. (2006, February 15). Payment for donor kidneys: Pros and cons. Retrieved from Kidney International: http://www.nature.com/ki/journal/v69/n6/full/5000262a.html

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