Selling kidneys.  I support it

We have estimated how much individuals would need to be paid for kidneys to be willing to sell them for transplants. These estimates take account of the slight risk to donors from transplant surgery, the number of weeks of work lost during the surgery and recovery periods, and the small risk of reduction in the quality of life.

Our conclusion is that a very large number of both live and cadaveric kidney donations would be available by paying about $15,000 for each kidney. That estimate isn't exact, and the true cost could be as high as $25,000 or as low as $5,000—but even the high estimate wouldn't increase the total cost of kidney transplants by a large percentage.

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How to fix the organ donor shortage? Let people sell their kidneys, say Gary Becker and Julio Elias
There is a clear remedy for the growing shortage of organ donors, say Gary S. Becker and Julio J. Elias: Establish a market, offer payments and save lives.

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  1. that is literally a highway to hell. You cant be selling your health. Its screaming with dehumanization of poor. For the love of all that is sacred, put resources into organ printing, not this madness. 

  2. +Jakub Kotyza is right.  If you thought Fox News talking about how poor people have refrigerators ( http://goo.gl/ZLJ7x ) was bad, wait until the right can say, "Why should there be food stamps when 90% of poor people have both kidneys????"

  3. The question is not if the system would be abused, but if that problem is worse than X number of people dying from lack of organs to transplant.

  4. It's not a matter of quantity but rather which people.  Allowing people to sell their organs would save more rich people by killing more poor people.

  5. I disagree that it would be only the rich to benefit.  

    Assume we just talk about kidneys for a moment and forget additional kidneys from increased sale of cadaver kidneys (which would probably be the majority of the extra kidneys available, but this is a hypothetical).  In this hypothetical we're talking only about selling your second kidney.

    What if 1 million "rich" people's lives were saved with a cost of 5000 additional poor people dying (from either surgery complications or health effects of not having that extra kidney) and 995,000 poor people getting 10 or 20 grand?

    Is it your position that it would be better for those 1 million people to die?

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