Should People Be Allowed to Sell Their Own Organs?

There is no law against selling your own property. Your organs belong to you. Surely it is especially important that they belong to you – they are part of your body, you don’t want them to be just on loan to you! Nobody else has a legal claim to them, therefore nobody else has a right to tell you whether you can sell them or not. Therefore, you have the right to sell them.

Side opposition would tell you that organ’s can’t be transferred because they necessary for your life. Consider, however, that organ donations are legal. Clearly the government does allow you to transfer your organs, just not for monetary recompense.

There is a constant need for organ donors for life-saving operations. People are greedy – they are going to be more motivated to give you their organs if they think they will get money for it.

Regarding the points in the “No” section:
The first point is only true if you would limit sale to a single governmental purchaser – such as the NHS. Although adding increase complexity to the situation, it may be permissible to allow highly regulated private sales.

However, personally, I agree that sale should be restricted to a single body to avoid abuse. On that note, even if the NHS would have to purchase the organs – say, £15k for a kidney – this is still drastically less than the costs of maintaining a patient on dialysis for the rest of their lives. Also, the quality of life received from a donation as opposed to dialysis is extreme.

Regarding the second point, you are drastically undercutting the effectiveness of such procedural safeguards that could be implemented. Even the simplest of tests could ensure sold organs would be free from disease – how would someone cheat a blood test?

Most people have organs, and there are much more people who can’t get work, who are in serious poverty and don’t have anything else they can sell. Organs go for thousands of pounds – easily enough to get someone enough food to last them for a few months and somewhere to sleep while they sort their lives out

Regarding the “no” arguments:

First, I agree that it is terrible that people live in poverty – but simply saying that they “should be helped” doesn’t really cut the mustard – how do you plan to remove all poverty?

Second – although illegal organ sales in countries such as India have demonstrated that the money received isn’t enough to remove them from poverty (because the amounts received are around £3-5k if that!), the amounts that could be paid in a developed country like the UK may indeed be enough to pay off debts, put down a deposit, rent a flat for a few months – £15k can achieve a lot!

Making it legal for people to sell their organs will cause less corruption by lessening the need for people to do so in secret. There is obviously a demand for organs and a market for selling them, so they will be traded regardless – if it is legal, there will be legal centers in hygienic conditions, standard prices, open places to advertise, specific rules about which organs can be sold and in what conditions etc and people to police it.

It would only be legal for you to sell your own organs with your own informed consent. People are always
temporarily selling themselves with their own informed consent, its called working for a wage.

I always find the slavery comparison slightly frustrating. Noone who advocates the permissibility of organ sale says that you should be able to sell yourself. This is just a gross exaggeration of the point. Now you may be thinking, what is to stop me doing so? Well, the law. It is entirely, 100%, definitely possible to limit which organs a person can sell, and just how many of them.

For example, you should not be able to sell vital organs – otherwise this would in effect be murder, brining in issues such as euthanasia.

Anti-market individuals always take points to the extreme, without realising that there is a middle ground that can easily be achieved! We can permit the sale of organs, and we can limit this through strict regulation!

It wouldn’t have to be the patient who paid. I mean, in the UK for example, the money would have to come from the NHS, which might mean a rise in taxes, but really, if it saves lives, isn’t it worth it?
Even without a National Health Service, other countries could still fund the organ selling, and therefore help to save many lives.

Anyway, some people may still donate organs just because they think its the right thing. If so, the patients wouldn’t have to pay any more than normal in counties such as America for such an operation. I don’t know how much they have to pay; being a UK citizen, I’m used to a free health service, a very useful and good thing.