Answers to common objections to payment for organs.

There are two medical risks that accompany donating a kidney: risk of the surgery and risk of living with one kidney. As to the first, the surgery called a ‘Tummy Tuck’ is more dangerous than donating a kidney (see our Articles page).

As to the second, people live the same average life span living with only one kidney whether they were born with only one kidney or they donated a kidney. Since society encourages altruistic kidney donation, society knows the medical risk to the donor is minimal. And obviously there is no medical risk involved if we are speaking about offering incentives to families for the organs of someone who is already deceased.

Society allows for commodification of the human body when it can help other people, such as selling hair, blood, and sperm or eggs to help people with fertility treatments. In the 1800s, the concept of Life Insurance was rejected by society as commodification of the human body because it was seen as ‘immoral’ to evaluate life and limb in terms of money. Once it became clear that Life Insurance could significantly help orphans and widows and benefit society, it became legalized.

Motive is comprised of many factors; it is never singular in nature or pure. A paid fireman runs into a burning building because he wants to help others and because he is getting a salary. Physicians spend many years in medical school to ultimately help people and to make a good living. There is nothing immoral about getting money to incentivize admirable behavior. When a firefighter or a physician saves a life should they be looked down upon because they took a paycheck?

Some think that offering financial compensation for organs will diminish altruistic donation. This conclusion is based on the assumptions that altruistic donors will be ‘turned off’ from donating given the commercialized flavor attached to donation and as a result of their belief that there is no need for altruistic donation since other people will step forward to sell their organs. There is not enough real-world data, however, to support this assumption that compensation will crowd out altruistic donation. And even if it were true, most likely the financial incentives offered will attract even more people to donate organs resulting in a net increase in organ donors. In Iran, for example, when paying for kidneys became legal in 1988 the percentage of people donating organs remained stable at 12%.

The slippery slope argument is that if payment for organs became legal it would encourage kidnapping and killing of people for their organs. First, this argument – as all slippery slope arguments do – diverts attention from deciding whether or not payment for organs is immoral.

Second, just because there is concern for consequential abuse does not mean the abuse will happen. (In the U.S. during the early 70s, for example, anti-abortion advocates warned that legalizing abortion would open the door for infanticide – that never happened.) Thirdly, procedures could be put into place that would prevent it (only buying organs from living donors who are made aware of the risks, who have had a year cooling off period, etc).

Fourthly, there is currently child labor working in coal mines. No one advocates ceasing to use coal-powered electricity. What is advocated is stricter oversight and regulation to make sure there are no children working in mines.

Lastly, legalizing payment will remove the penal risk and the middleman thus reducing the price of an organ to the point where it would not be worthwhile for anyone to try to procure one illegally. In fact, it is only now, while it is illegal to pay for organs and it happens anyway, that prices are artificially inflated and there is such a concern.