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Drew Carey on Organ Markets
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008Excellent. Thousands of people die each year for no other reason than that we can’t get over the “ick” factor of allowing people to pay for organs.
29 Responses to “Drew Carey on Organ Markets”
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This is a subject that is near and dear to me. You can already go to China and purchase any organ you need.
Thousands of people dieing is not a reason to degrade the human condition.
If its paid for privately, the poor will be farmed for organs.
If its paid for publicly, you add another gov. institution.
If you are in favor of selling then what about leasing?
It is true the Chinese have adopted very liberal policies towards organ transplants and medical procedures which have attracted many Westerners. You just have to be careful when they plug in your new kidney it doesn’t transfer some malware to your ticker.
Sadly, allowing living people to sell their organs is a political non-starter. A better compromise method is as follows: allow people to sell organs after their death. Right now, when you get your driver’s license, you can choose whether to be an organ donor or not. Most choose not to. We should simply implement a system of paying people for choosing yes. The amount would likely be rather small, since most people aren’t going to die any time soon and not everyone who dies leaves usable organs. Maybe a couple hundred bucks. In exchange for the money, you sign a binding contract to donate your organs upon your death. Simple as that. “Donors” get money, sick people get more organs, and no liberal hand-wringing about exploitation.
I think some state was planning on doing something like this by waiving the license fee for donors, but I’m not sure if they ever did.
If you don’t own yourself then you don’t own anything - since you can’t have a right to use your property if you don’t have a right to use your body to use that property as you see fit. Of course you should be able to enter contracts concerning the sale of your organs, either those that can be taken while still alive or that are to be harvested upon death. How on earth can someone believe a monopoly agency of force (government) is justified in preventing a transaction that could save a person’s life, when each party consents to the transaction? How arrogant to believe it would belittle the poor or those who would perhaps make choices we wouldn’t, in order to use their property to get money. It’s related to the moralizing arguments against prostitution - just because person A wouldn’t choose that option, and thinks it is degrading, has absolutely no bearing on whether it is justified to use force to stop everyone else from making that choice.
Thousands of people dying is not a reason to degrade the human condition by allowing people to pay for food.
If its paid for privately, farmers will be robbed for their grain…
Etc.
Couple of thoughts from someone whose been an ICU nurse for almost 30yrs now. First, fortunately or unfortunely, Mr Stein, when we lay dying we do not belong only to ourselves; we belong to our family and specifically to our official ‘Next Of Kin’. There have been many examples I know of personally where the actual patient whose organs would be harvested (which is the word used for removing these from a dead person) made it very clear that he/she DID wish to be a donor but the family disagreed. In every case the family members’ wishes were abided by. They after all are the ones who can hire a lawyer.
Second, there already is a huge amount of money spent in the organ-procurement industry. Many people donate time and services (volunteers sometimes fly the organs to recipients in their own aircraft at their own expense for example) but the organ procurement people pay hospitals for the use of labs, operating rooms and etc. I assure you, surgeons do not ‘harvest’ organs for the warmth and satisfaction to be had.
Seems pretty obvious that a small part of that money–enough to pay funeral expenses, say–would be a way for the recipients and the agencies involved to say “thank you” to the family that donated. This seems somewhat different from “buying” a kidney. But it would serve a similar purpose of expanding the supply to organs. Changing the law somewhat to allow this sort of exchange would get a lot more support than allowing a free market in dead peoples parts.
This comment rating doesn’t appear to be working properly. I voted “thumbs up” on a comment and it got a thumbs down. To verify, I tried again from a different computer with the same results.
Is this due to operator error, a bug, or are you using the alternate Roman coliseum thumbs up/down convention?
I’m actually in favor of the decriminalization of prostitution (after Spitzer gets his just reward). But free market organ selling is not “related to” prostitution. Masturbating on someones body and taking possession of a healthy organ from a healthy body is not even remotely the same thing, but good job sticking to your Lib. ideology.
There are instances where couples have adopted babies and the mothers have gone to court and gotten their baby back. If a mother whose baby is only half of her can get a child back what kind of litigation might we see for an organ?
And none of you free market lovers have even touched on the fact that what if someone who was poor needed the same organ a rich person did? Can no one fathom a situation where the poor person has been on a waiting list for years and a rich person for one day when the organ becomes available? What then? “Sorry poor man, sucks to be you. Welcome to America, the greatest country in the world………if you can afford it.”
There might be a way for the gov. to pay a small stipend, to the family of the deceased, in lieu of continued dialysis for another patient, but current waiting lists would have to be maintained. There probably is some common ground on the issue but the free market is not where this belongs.
EdinTally–an open market in organs will make more of them available to everyone. Isn’t this obvious? Everyone who currently donates organs still will, plus some more people will who didn’t previously. Who cares if all the extra people saved are rich? Are rich people’s lives worth *less* than poor people’s now? Maybe we should dole out food the same way. I mean, think of the injustice of a person who has been starving for weeks, and some 400 lb rich guy comes along and says sorry, but I’m hungry too, and I can pay for this food. Sucks to be you!
Typical socialist attitude–better everyone suffer than there be any inequality.
On the subject of food:
Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that,
“ …no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation. ”
Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine.
——————————–
So much for your fat man and the free market.
I’m pointing out that a poor person and a rich person are equal. Fortunately, I’m backed by our own Constitution. You deride me and call me a socialist, but fail to answer my points with any kind of thought or reason.
If thinking makes me a socialist. If trying to think beyond today makes me a socialist. If thinking about what the possible ramifications of new laws might mean in the future. Then sir, I wear the mantle proudly.
If Libertarians want to be more callous than Republicans, don’t be squimish about it. Taking little bites here and there. Be proud.
Edin,
Yes, you are a socialist on this topic. But it’s not because you are thinking, it’s because you think the issue of organ supply and demand can’t be helped by the same open market process that efficiently and consensually allocates every other commodity that exists.
*hangs head low* It is true. I don’t think the free market is the answer to everything. Will it be quartering or just run out of town in shame? I beg mercy.
But if I am to be shamed in such a manner, I ask only one small favor before I’m exiled. May I have a reasonable response. It doesn’t have to too well thought out. I don’t want to overreach on my last request.
JohnMcC - Good point - That is why here in Ohio a law was passed that makes driver license organ donor consent binding and does not allow the family to override the donor’s decision.
Edin,
A response to what? Emotion-based pleading that someone who has more money to purchase an organ will likely have a better chance to get one than someone with less money to purchase an organ? (Which seems strange, when a market in organs doesn’t suddenly mean insurance goes away)
The free market may not be the answer to everything. But it should be the default position, and asking an agency of force to limit people’s choices (especially when that can and will lead to death due to lack of a good) should be well justified. Sorry if I haven’t read that from you yet.
Oh, you were so close to showing actual thought in your writing. Better luck next time.
Edin,
If you are going to avoid the topic, at least have the spine to walk away without the drive-by snark. Hey, if there was a market in body parts you could buy one!
And deprive your monster?! I wouldn’t think of it.
/salute
Edin, the cost of the organ itself will be negligible compared to the cost of the transplant.
As Nurse JohnMcC noted above, everyone in the donation/transplant process makes money, except the person providing the most valuable and critical part.
I’d be curious to think what the people who wait on lists, dying, think of Edin’s idea that what might save their lives “degrades the human condition”. Somehow, I doubt he’d be the first one to break the news to him that his moral worldview is justification for using coercion to prevent the medical care they need.
Edin, on the most basic level, what could possibly be more one’s own than one’s organs? By what right do you claim the authority to control what a person wants to do with their organs?
Like any market, there would need to be controls for fraud and theft, and it seems like your objections (poorly described as they are) mostly center around the theory that, like anything else, protections for consumers will not work 100% of the time. Thanks for the news flash. We’re right there with you.
Do you have any principled objection to the process that doesn’t rest on an ill-described, mystical moral authority, or problems with markets in general that are already addressed in a number of ways or for other commodities?
I’m characterized as a socialist. The I’m accused of having some kind of moral authority to decide for others.
And yet, while I offer some chance at common ground all I get in return is, free market this, and my body my right??
The reason I don’t have to go into a lengthy essay about why I think this is a poor idea, is because it speaks for itself. I’m clearly on the side of the majority in America if not most of the world (China and Iran notwithstanding). You would like America to make a major paradigm shift and offer no concrete reason as to why or how.
good luck with that
Oh, you’re in the majority? Well then I guess it must be moral, because we all know majorities have never oppressed minorities before.
Mr. Porter,
Don’t feed the troll. At least I assume he’s one; he can’t seriously base his argument *for* using force to prevent consensual transactions on hand-waving and the fact that it’s currently illegal, right? And yet he’s in favor of prostitution legalization…yes, definitely a troll.
This is what happens when you invite Obama supporters, Mr. Balko!
I think what Edin Tally is getting at is that in organ donation for money you are paying someone to harm themself for your benefit. Most people are a bit queasy about this. It does not matter to them that the harm is consented to, it is that the recipient knowingly brings it about. It is also seen as exploitation of another’s desperation.
I don’t know what the right answer is but the objections above are ones that you must seriously consider and not try to brush aside
“if thinking makes me a socialist…”
(cue soaring orchestral anthem)
barf. care to comment on the great socialist famines of the 1931-34 ukraine and 1957-61 china? how about modern-day zimbabwe? or do those not count since they were, y’know, *caused* by their socialist overlords? “besides, the only ones who died were the proles!”
Lloyd,
People pay good money to watch two people beat the tar out of each other. A boxing career brings with it greatly increased risk of long-term damage to the brain. However, as entertaining as boxing is, no one has ever had their life saved over watching or participating in a boxing match.
It should be noted that many fighters come out of poor neighborhoods. And only a few make it to the big time (money).
The Edin Talleys of the world are scum.
Their base position is “no one gets to survive unless I approve of how it is done.”
I had the same conversation with a person who was incensed about “price gouging” in disaster zones. He finally got around to admitting that he would forcibly break up a peaceful transaction (if he had the ability) if he thought it was unfair regardless of the effect it had on the buyer. The buyer would go away without whatever he needed to survive and the seller would be arrested.
Damn the cost! I want fairness, and I’m willing to let you die to get it!
Edin,
Clearly, it doesn’t speak for itself. That’s why I asked for further explanation, because what you’d given wasn’t sufficient to support an authoritarian position. You talk about being in favor of decriminalized prostitution; I’m sure there are a great many people who would disagree with you by saying exactly the same thing you said to me. Most places it’s illegal, and the majority probably think it should stay that way. Does that prove their position to you? Unlikely.
You then say that no one’s offered a concrete reason as to why there should be a major paradigm shift, but that’s absurd. The entire video above was one long reason. The reason is that peoples’ lives are at stake, and a major paradigm shift would almost certainly save a large number of them. Is that really not meaningful at all to you?
I’ll ask again, by what right do you feel you can take away both freedom and lives? Can you actually clarify the reasons and basis for your supposed moral high ground, keeping in mind that simply being in the majority is not a convincing or meaningful argument? Is it safe to assume that if you’d lived during the time of slavery in the states when most people thought that was all right, that you’d be on that side as well?
Lloyd:
I recognize that risk, there is certainly the possibility of abuse, fraud and coercion, just as there is with any business transaction. The specifics of the laws and enforcement mechanisms would have to be worked out, but in my view this part of the discussion is about the principle, not what would undoubtedly be an extremely complex practice. You state that the seller’s consent does not matter, but I think that statement is absolutely false. That is the only thing that matters. As long as the transaction is genuinely voluntary and informed, no one here has offered any real justification for denying lifesaving care to those in need.
Matthew:
I didn’t say that the seller’s consent didn’t matter. I was trying to describe how many other people will see this matter. people here are focussing on the market. Most of those who disagree with you would say that the market is too narrow a focus. I was describing what I think is behind the “Ick” factor. You won’t convince opponents if you don’t take objections such as this seriously even if you eventually reject them. To take them seriously you have to be willing to question your own position. In other words to be able to defend a free maket position on this issue you have to have been willing to question it rather than have reflexively supported a market solution.
As for me I haven’t made up my mind.