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Let Natalie Cole Buy a Kidney
Outside of Iran, the only place to easily obtain a kidney is on the thriving black market, an option my father says he also considered, and one that's just a Google search away. The World Health Organization estimates that around 14,000 kidney transplants per year—some of them performed right here in America—are done with illegally obtained organs, kidneys purchased from living Indians, Pakistanis, Brazilians, often for about $5,000.
I asked my dad if his thoughts of purchasing an organ from the third world were ever accompanied by pangs of guilt. "Absolutely none!" he said. "The arrogance of those who decide that they know what is best for me, you, the poor, and the sick is just staggering."
Countries less offensive to Americans than Iran are also considering legalization. Last week, Singapore's parliament legalized monetary reimbursement for living organ donors. It's now completely aboveboard—and probably expected—for a kidney recipient in Singapore to pay for his donor's travel expenses, lodging, or time off from work. The hope is that the legislation will lead to a larger, government-run version of America's National Transplant Assistance Fund, a nonprofit that provides some assistance for some uninsured organ donors' medical expenses (though it’s far too small to help everyone in need, and doesn’t offer any cash “reward” on top of expenses as incentive for potential donors).
The chief argument against a cash-for-kidneys system is that it will summon an outright organ market, one in which the rich procure second chances at life from the poor. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at Berkeley and one of America's most vocal critics of the organ trade, criticizes kidney sales for two main reasons. What she most takes issue with is that organ sellers are often impoverished laborers who return from their surgeries unable to work and without the proper aftercare. Soon, their fee is spent on things other than their health, and they're drinking unclean water and eating bad food, neglecting a body that needs time to recover. The professor's second point is less tangible: She believes it's dangerous to commodify the human body. "It's the sense that body and soul are connected," she once told the Christian Science Monitor, "and selling your body is chipping away at what gives you existence."
Her first argument doesn’t hold water. Every reputable proponent of legalized organ sales (which, by the way, includes both Dr. Arthur Matas, former president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, and Dr. Benjamin Hippen, transplant nephrologist at the Carolinas Medical Center) says they envision a market that's strictly regulated by government bodies, preventing donors from getting hustled and left to fall ill. As it stands now, the criminality of the organ trade is what’s dangerous. My father recalled asking his surgeons if buying a kidney in the black market was safe. "They couldn't give me an answer because there are no records kept in the black market," he said. "But what they could do was tell me about all the people they saw who were now sick and dying because the black market is unregulated."
Dr. Michael Friedlaender, head of the kidney-transplant follow-up unit at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, has likened the black-market organ trade to abortions in years past: "Though I hate to compare it, because this saves lives, it's like abortions, where the illegal state of abortion caused terrible things to happen to young women,” he says. “[With organs], we have no control over standards, over payments, over follow-up health care. You can make standards only for things that are legal."
As for Scheper-Hughes' point about commodifying the body, since when is that new? There are a countless instances in which America allows the poor to do dangerous things with their bodies for money. Working-class people shoulder the burden of war; they risk their lungs and limbs in mine shafts, factories, slaughterhouses, and fishing boats. And it remains perfectly legal for a surrogate mother to sell her womb—also no small physical burden. What makes a kidney so special?
I think it’s similar to America's failure to consider legalizing marijuana. Both are supported by many medical professionals, but the political will to change the law exists for neither. Yet every day, 17 Americans die while waiting for a kidney. It’s an organ most of us could give to them easily, if only there were a system in place to compensate us for our trouble. My father was lucky to have my support and the resources to go elsewhere if he didn't. But with such a definite source of life constantly operating just out of the reach, it's a shame that luck comes into the equation at all.
Cord Jefferson is a writer living in Brooklyn. He is the managing editor of Jossip Initiatives and his work has appeared in Filter, The A.V. Club and National Geographic. You can read more about his kidney operation here.
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Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Though the current system leaves much to be desired, paying for organs and after care may restrict them to the wealthy.
It's always bothered me that people donate blood and are not paid, but the gathering agency, hospitals, infusion personal all get paid resulting in a pint of blood being billed at $1,000 per unit. It's wrong.
Now that we as a country are waking up to the fact that healthcare MUST be affordable and accessible to all, issues like paying for organs needs to be open to public debate.
Like millions of others I have an organ donor sticker on my drivers license. But what people don't understand is that past 50 your organs aren't high on the implantation list. Organ donation is really aimed at youger folks whose organs have less "wear and tear."
So the issue of paying for organs is one that deserves consideration and ample regulation.
It's the age old debate of whose body is it and how much control should they have over it. If someone wants to sell their organs, they should be able to do it. If they're willing to live with the consequences, so be it. Legalize it, regulate it, make it a lot safer than it is now.
Overall, transplants are a procedure for people with lots of money or lots of insurance. But should the choice of who gets new organs also depend upon social worth? That is to say, should a doctor get a new organ but a houskeeper be refused?
I donated a kidney at 60 years of age. Was nice and healthy and is still working 11 years later.
Okay, so 2 questions... Wasn't Dirty Pretty Things just about the worst movie ever made? I think if the organ trade is legalized, if nothing else, it would prevent crap like this from being released. The nonchalance of the bad guy over the idea of harvesting organs just seemed idiotic. Heyyy, I'm pulling organs out of people's bodies. This isn't rocket science dudes! We'd also be spared tripe such as Repo! The Genetic Opera featuring Paris Hilton's face falling off and the Vidians on Star Trek Voyager featuring multiple yellow shirt guys getting diced and repackaged.
My second question was, if the cheerleader on Heroes really did sell a kidney for cash, would the anaesthesia work for her? Or would she be immune to it like she is to alcohol? Because that would hurt. Thank you everyone for listening to my thoughts on this subject.
Fair compensation for any part of one's body one wishes to sell should absolutely be legalized. If I can sell my hair, eggs, or sperm I should be able to sell my kidney.
However regulations need to be carefully through out to ensure that anyone who needs an organ can get it, not just those that can "afford to pay". The current system, while unfair, is at least equally unfair. In theory anyway, the rich are no more likely to get a transplant than the poor. If compensation is legalized, as it should be, that should remain the case.
This will be a passing phase. They are now able to produce new organs from your own cells. So if a part wears out... they just grow you a new one. Don't believe me... Oprah did a whole show on it... lol.
Give them 10 years... and donating organs will most likely be a thing of the past. (Or be fading quickly)
You can sell your sperm, you can sell your eggs. And in Nevada and Amsterdam, you can sell your body for sex. It's nobody's business to monitor anyone else's spiritual well-being in this way.
Simple solution. Rather than signing your drivers license to become an organ donor, you have to sign it to opt out.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
I liked your article because you kept flipping over the coin to examine both sides of the organ-for-sale polemic. But the problem is you never actually talked with donors (your experience being personally elective) to elicit their motivations and how would they reconcile the sale if, in future, they were, for example, diagnosed with diabetes. Sure, the black market is pernicious, preying on the indigent with the promise of quick cash, more than they might make in one or more years (5k being the going rate). But selling sperm, blood, hair is not the same as selling a vital organ. It has nothing to do with "chipping" away at the "soul" but everything to do with chipping away at one's long-term health. Would the legalized, state-sponsored organ-for-sale program cover me-or you-should our lone kidney malfunction? Just how long would long-term care be? Or is there a limited warranty? Longevity and duration of coverage need to be more fully addressed before anyone can sign on the dotted line.
The U.S. and Western Europe did attempt to compensate people for donating blood but ceased because the 'paid' blood showed a much higher incidence of posttransfusion infection. (Eastlund T. Monetary blood donation incentives and the risk of transfusion-transmitted infection. Transfusion 1998 38: 874.)
If people will lie in order to receive a small payment for a blood donation, imagine the lengths they'll go to for a five-figure kidney payment....
Regardless, the real flaw in this argument is that living donation is 'safe'. While the medical community has been harvesting organs from living people for over 50 years, they've never deemed them important enough to follow or study comprehensively. So despite their proclaimations, they don't really know how living donors fare long-term (a situation that will grow more tenuous as criteria for donors is expanded to meet the need for donor organs)
The current system and law does nothing to protect or inform living donors. It's well documented that living donors suffer from depression, anxiety and PTSD-like symptoms, yet transplant centers offer no aftercare or support. Some living donors have been unable to procure health or life insurance post-donation, and yes, some have even ended up on the waiting list themselves.
It's completely unethical to encourage more people to be living donors until we treat them with the same consideration as recipients. Living donor don't want money; they want respect and protection for their health and well-being.
www.livingdonor101.com
The problem with an open market are:
1. You are substituting 1 class of "rich" people (the insured, many of whom are not really rich but are lucky enough to have a work-based health plan) with another clas - those who just have the $$$$$
2. Medical decisions about most appropriate recipient -to-donor will be distorted by user's capacity to pay. There are enough medical decisions distorted by $$$$$ in the USA, no sense i nadding another one.
3. Encouragement of many people to join an open market, possibly without reference to their short- or long-term health. (See point 2)
The *real* problem is the absolute mess that is US health insurance and lack of a universal health scheme. It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world cannot or chooses not to look after its sick
Thank you.
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