"Of course I'm pro-choice. A woman owns her body and can do what she wants with it."
"Even give part of it away? Donate a
kidney?"
"Of course. It's her body."
"Haw about if she wants to sell a kidney to
someone? It's her body, right?"
"No! Definitely not! Rich people would get all
the kidneys and poor people would just...die. What are you, some kind of a
damn...Republican?!"
***
Each year, over six thousand Americans die
waiting for a kidney transplant. Many more thousands die waiting for liver,
lung or heart transplants.
Suppose the gov't allowed a free
market in buying and selling human organs with regulation to prevent fraud and
assure informed consent. Maybe sounds a little ghoulish (unless you happen
to need a transplant, in which case it sounds...enlightened) but,
nevertheless, what would be the result?
Well, if you were rich enough, you would
probably offer a lot of money to buy an organ right away (it's possible to live
a perfectly normal life with only one kidney, and with liver and lung, you would
offer to buy only a piece of the organ). In the case of a heart, you would, of
course, have to make an offer to the family of the deceased.
Now you're off the list(s) and everyone below
you moves up a notch. What's wrong with that? The rich get their
transplants the fastest but most everyone else gets theirs faster now that there
are fewer people on the list.
And finally, isn't this exactly the kind of
thing that insurance was designed for, i.e. a lot of people paying a small
amount each year so that if they are someday one of the relatively few who need
to purchase an organ for transplantation, it wouldn't bankrupt
them?
And. of course, there's no reason that any of
this would ever have to become compulsory. If you're not interested in a
transplant and would prefer dialysis, well, "If you like your kidney, you can
kee..." No, really.
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