...since 1984, it has been illegal to pay someone to surrender a body part, even posthumously. Campaigns to browbeat Americans into signing organ donor cards, however, haven't sufficed. The transplant organ shortage has grown.
Since 1989, kidney donations have doubled. But the number of patients in need of them is five times higher than it was then. Last year, 4,456 people died while waiting for a kidney transplant. The story with livers follows the same line.
Among the losers from this guaranteed-shortage policy are victims of cancer and other lethal diseases who need bone marrow transplants. Some of them have filed a lawsuit, which goes to court in Los Angeles this week, asking to be allowed to offer compensation to donors—which is now a felony punishable by five years in prison.
One of the people involved in the lawsuit is Doreen Flynn of Lewiston, Maine, a single mother with five kids—including three afflicted with a rare, fatal blood disease that can be cured only with a bone marrow transplant.
The ban is particularly indefensible in this realm. Someone giving up a kidney loses an important organ for good. But bone marrow donors produce new marrow to replace what is lost. Given that it's legal under federal law to buy and sell blood and sperm, why is bone marrow treated differently?
Monetary incentives would offset the downside of letting strangers perforate your flesh with sharp instruments. Someone who provides marrow has to go through a longer and less enjoyable process than supplying blood or sperm.
Showing posts with label organ transplants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organ transplants. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Organ sales by the living: a debate we ought to have
"...the one-year transplant survival rate from living kidney donors is 95 percent compared to 89 percent from deceased donors. The five-year
transplant survival rate is 80 percent from living donors and 65 percent from deceased donors. Kidney transplants are much cheaper than maintaining a patient in renal failure on dialysis.
Right now, 55 countries legally prohibit giving or receiving payment for organs. However, 62 countries do allow living donors to be compensated for their lost wages and medical expenses. Caplan and colleagues want to clearly distinguish between sales of organs, tissues, and cells, on the one hand, and trafficking in people whose organs are removed for transplantation on the other—and rightly so.
But the Caplan study cites estimates that “up to 5 to10 percent of kidney transplants performed annually around the world are the result of trafficking.” That translates into somewhere between 3,400 to 6,800 gray or black market kidney transplants per year. Until tissue engineering becomes a reality, enabling replacement organs to be grown in vats, the demand for “donated” organs will increasingly outstrip supply.
By prohibiting the development of legal markets in human organs, the United Nations is ultimately forcing more desperately poor people who wish to sell their organs into black markets, penalizing them for their poverty, and implying that they lack the ability to make rational decisions about what to do with their bodies. Paternalism is bad enough, but banning organ markets is ineffective and counterproductive paternalism at its worst.
transplant survival rate is 80 percent from living donors and 65 percent from deceased donors. Kidney transplants are much cheaper than maintaining a patient in renal failure on dialysis.
Right now, 55 countries legally prohibit giving or receiving payment for organs. However, 62 countries do allow living donors to be compensated for their lost wages and medical expenses. Caplan and colleagues want to clearly distinguish between sales of organs, tissues, and cells, on the one hand, and trafficking in people whose organs are removed for transplantation on the other—and rightly so.
But the Caplan study cites estimates that “up to 5 to10 percent of kidney transplants performed annually around the world are the result of trafficking.” That translates into somewhere between 3,400 to 6,800 gray or black market kidney transplants per year. Until tissue engineering becomes a reality, enabling replacement organs to be grown in vats, the demand for “donated” organs will increasingly outstrip supply.
By prohibiting the development of legal markets in human organs, the United Nations is ultimately forcing more desperately poor people who wish to sell their organs into black markets, penalizing them for their poverty, and implying that they lack the ability to make rational decisions about what to do with their bodies. Paternalism is bad enough, but banning organ markets is ineffective and counterproductive paternalism at its worst.
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