I think it should. After all, your body is your property, isn't it? If the government bans you from selling your organs, that is the same as saying the government owns your body in some way. What bad can come of this?

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I'm definitely in favor of legalizing selling one's kidneys. I'm not sure how much farther than that I'd be willing to go, however.

I think there may be some pros to selling your organs in an open market. Currently it is very difficult to get a hold of organs when transplants are needed. Waiting lists are incredibly long and in many cases patients either get worse or die before they actually get an organ. A free market system in which organs could be sold would indeed make it easier for organs to be readily accessible. Like Slon said there is an issue of how much freedom one has over his or her body. One argument is that one should be able to do as he or she wishes to do with his or her body as long as it does not endanger anyone else. So in regards to the above mentioned reasons, i believe that perhaps it should be permissible to sell one's organs.

However this market must also be carefully watched. If organ selling became legal there would no doubt be people out there who would obtain organs illegally in order to turn a profit. In essence organ selling may in fact lead to the exacerbation of the child trafficking problem globally. Children, as well as adults, all over the world are being bought and sold for horrendous purposes. If this market were to go unchecked we may start to see a new evil surface in the form of organs being taken violently from innocent people.

So in the end it is not just a question of whether or not Organ selling should be legalized. Whether we like it or not it seems that that is where we as a society are heading. What we must decide is what stipulations should be implemented when organ selling does become legalized.

IMO if everyone would be an organ donor, then the waiting list and such wouldn’t exist…….Also it shouldn’t cost $$$$$$$$$ for organ replacement, many people can’t get an operation done due to the cost of it and more insurance companies are putting dollar limits on their coverage.

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Many times I believe Americans will have to take back the country and start a new government.

I imagine putting organs on the open market would be damaging to the poor. The currently high cost doesn't take into effect the price of a kidney. I know I wouldn't sell mine for less than several hundred thousand.

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Organs that can be donated from living donors include the lung, partial liver or pancreas and the kidney. My dad needs a liver transplant, but it appears that partial liver transplant are performed mostly for kids. I really don't think legalizing the sale of organs is the way to go. While it may fix one problem, it will cause others and it wouldn't be a good balance. The people most desperate for the cash will be the poor and the people who can afford to buy would be the rich - you want to exploit the poor for the benefit of the rich? This is not a way for the rich to help the poor. There would be an increase in human traffiking. It's just not a fair trade.

Saying you can't sell your body, or parts of your body, isn't the same as saying the govt owns your body. You do get a choice on if you want to be an organ donor or not.

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When it's done voluntarily and makes sense medically. Why not? But such a market should be regulated in some way, to prevent misuse, like trading organs from forced "donations" for example. You would need some matching-organization anyway to organize such a trade.

Exactly. If unregulated, "organ farms" could spring up and lead to terrible abuse.

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wheres the poll?

I say yes.

Ethical reasons for saying NO aside, do you think it is right for needy people to wait until someone dies to save their life?

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Isnt blood a type of organ? maybe thats not right.
anyway, if you sell your blood, why not the kidney?

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We already have people on death row. We don't need to create "organ farms".

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I mean illegal organ farms, like those that abduct kids, kill them, and sell their organs. If there was a market for organs such farms would undoubtedly spring up.

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Unregulated organ trade undoubtedly can have very negative effects, especially in third world countries. There's a lot of money in it.

Personally, I'm gonna have to go with "no", though I think this puts me in the minority.

I remember from college people who went to sell plasma over and over again to get spending money. If they had the option of selling off an organ for thousands of dollars they'd have done it in a heart-beat and quite possibly seriously screwed up their later lives.
As has already been mentioned, the poor would be much more likely to sell off their organs in desperation. And I suspect that those with expensive substance abuse habits would be in front of the line, thus making the lower rung of society one bit more degraded and wretched.
To farther doom the poor, this would likely mean that only the rich will ever receive organ replacements since they can pay for them. Rather then just be organ doners, people could will their organs to their family upon death so they could sell them, thus perhaps paying for burial costs, and making the number of free organs floating around very, very small.
In short, I'm willing to classify selling off your organs (along with say, selling yourself into slavery) as something you're simply not allowed to do because the negative social effects are so great.


HOWEVER, if we did allow organ sales, I think it's essential that two policies go along with that:
1) You cannot buy organs from any foreign nation unless they have laws forbidding coercive sales and enforce those laws. Importing cheap organs from Sudan is no good.
2) If you opt to sell an organ, the state is not responsible for any health-related costs that result from that decision. If you're one remaining kidney has trouble when you're 60, Medicare will not pay for any drugs or treatment that would not have been necessary had you kept your original kidney.

Why not?

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Little known fact #46: Every definition of a given word in a dictionary is used equally as often.

Little known fact #53: Your testicles serve only one purpose: to reproduce. Every other function is a complete accident.

Little known fact #65: Because the human body does not prepare for death, humans never die.