Money for your organs
What would it take for you to donate an organ to a stranger? Would you if money was involved? These questions have come to mind when thinking about changing the altruistic nature of the organ donation system to one that could benefit both donors and recipients even more. If there was a system that could pay donors for their organs, perhaps more people would be more inclined to give a part of them away to save a life. There would, of course, be some drawbacks that would arise from putting a completely new system to donating but there are compromises and other countries whose example we can follow. One thing for sure is that there are too many patients waitlisted in the system compared to the number of available donors.
There has been a significant increase in the amount of donors compared to 1991, but despite the increase, it is still not enough due to the immense gap between donors and those being waitlisted. In 2017, Organ Donation Statistics, reports that there were 115,000 people on the waitlist while only 16,473 donors were available and that gap is only getting bigger with every year. Amy L Friedman even voiced this issue to the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health by stating “The demand for life-saving organ transplantation has so outpaced supply that waiting patients and transplant teams are desperate.” Not only is the current system failing, it is being outpaced and there is a need for a new system to be put in place.
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Pros:
- It can save lives – Having an increased number of people waiting for organ donations, one organ donor can save many lives as these organs can match those who are in need.
- Extending the family’s grievance – For a donation to be successful, the donor may need to extend their life support, which could prolong the grieving stage.
- You give someone a second chance – Because of transplantation, this treatment helps them extend and live a longer life.
- Restriction of being an eligible donor – Not everybody is eligible to donate specific organs, sometimes are age restrictions.
- Contribution to medical research opportunities – Sometimes donated organs cannot be helpful to someone in an instance. It can also be used for research to understand disease or illness.
Cons:
- Organ donation may lead to health issues – After surgery, it will change the lifestyle of the donor and if not followed it can cause health problems.
- A family consolation – When someone dies in a tragedy and becomes a donor it could be a closure to the family that if they donate a part of them to someone else there is a memory that their life was not wasted. This also connects them to the new person who has been saved because of their lost family members.
- There are limited organs that could be accepted - The body can also reject organs.
- Helping someone right now – Being an exact match for somebody on the list can help them straight away. If you are alive you can donate kidneys, pancreas, portions of lungs, and intestine tissue.
- Companies do not always have donor policies - If you consider donating organs discretion of paid and unpaid leaves will be challenging since being a donor is expensive. There are no rules for organ donors.
One would think donors would not spend money when spending time at the hospital for donating. However, what about their travels? People who donate have to spend money on transportation, stay in a hotel, and just stay on standby ready for the transplant. Susan Kreimer said to Leafmag, “Meanwhile, from a financial standpoint, estimates have found it costs a kidney donor in the United States an average of $3,000 to navigate through the entire transplant process, which may include time off from work, travels to and from the hospital, accommodations, food, and childcare expenses.” Even kind people just wanting to help another stranger may put themselves into a bit of debt when just trying to make the visits and check-ups. If they could get paid in compensation for donating their organs, this may also encourage people since it would cover most of the unseen expenses. Some people would consider this to be morally wrong when considering using this system which we would have to take into account.
We wouldn’t know how our society would react to the new system if it were to be implemented but what will come up are the moral issues behind it. The National Kidney Foundation said, “Offering direct or indirect economic benefits in exchange for organ donation is inconsistent with our values as a society. Any attempt to assign a monetary value to the human body, or body parts, either arbitrarily, or through market forces, diminishes human dignity.” Just knowing there is a price for our organs looks morally wrong and just makes it look like there is a price to human life. Even though putting a price on organs will look wrong it will be protecting people from the underground market of illegally selling and buying organs. Also, comments made by Anya Adair and Stephen J Wigmore in the National Center for Biotechnology Information said “Such systems are proposed to attempt to remove the need for an underground and illegal black market in organs. We would argue that however a paid donation is dressed up, the buying and selling of human organs and tissues can never be made ethical because it will always penalize the weakest.” What we learn from this is that people will be taken advantage of through this system but there could be compromises that can happen for these people not to suffer or even fall into more debt.
There are several benefits to implementing a system that compensates donors, such as gradually removing the sales of organs in the black market and increasing the number of donors. Increasing the number of donors could save the lives of those in desperate need. Jonel Aleccia from NBC News commented, “In the U.S., for instance, more than 98,000 people are waiting for kidneys, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, or OPTN. Last year, more than 4,500 people in the U.S. died waiting for kidneys.” It is hard to predict how fast an organ will become available, but patients can wait up to five years before finding a match. The sad reality is that thousands of people die waiting on the list for a donor to become a match.
Donate Life Midwest, an organization that helps register donors, wrote a story about a fourteen-year-old girl, Alexa, from North Dakota who unfortunately died waiting for a lung transplant. They stated how brave, courageous, and hopeful she was about her situation and how “She talked about all the things she was going to do when she received her transplant; dancing, earn her black belt in tae kwon do, learn to drive.” The possibility of her being alive could have increased if the system we have in place would have been different in a way that would increase the number of donors registering to save a life.
Losing people when it can be prevented with the possibility to benefit both sides it wouldn't hurt to give this new system a chance. There are a few ways we could try to copy or at least evolve other versions of this system from current ideas to other countries that are doing it like the United Kingdom.
There are many ways our government can approach this system that have the potential to increase the number of donors by increasing their incentive with the offer of money. Friedman mentions, “To protect potential donors, regulation and payment must be governed by a balanced, objective, and multidisciplinary body. Organ donation should be limited to the country's legal residents, but family members should not necessarily be excluded from donations solely because of a lack of residency. The exclusion of other non-resident donors will limit the exploitation of people from low-income countries.” This type of system would keep people from also taking advantage of those that could also benefit but cause a greater loss to them. There is more information in her journal but even with this, there can always be an adjustment the idea of at least changing the system is better than a system that we know is already starting to fail more than 100,000 recipients. Now put yourself in these people's position would YOU want to be on a waiting list that could end your life if just one person was nice enough to have been a donor? You wouldn’t care if they did it for free or if they got paid as long as you got to stay out of the hospital. People are not getting more heartless but as a matter, they fact getting more generous and donors are increasing but not at a rate that can change some of these people’s lives for them to leave these hospitals.
In conclusion, the change in the current system of strangers shelling out a couple thousand just to be able to give you one of their organs is still currently not working. Yes some good people do this and we could educate the public more and how and the journey of giving your organs away for free but there are more benefits to trying out a new system that would potentially change the way people want to donate their organs. Any person can donate eight of their organs upon death and even with just one organ from a live patient is enough to get people on this registry to help others. Just doing one small little thing for someone can finally help you too if this system were to be put in place. Finally, if you were to put yourself in these people's situations and struggles you would want a donor to show up quickly, so do you want the system to change or stay the same?
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