Introduction
Organ trade is a term used to describe a process or operation that involves two individuals, the first one being the donor of the organ and the second one being the receiver of the donated organ, or the one who needs it. There can be many reason why a person would want or need to undergo an organ transplantation surgery and one of the most common reasons are those that are related to medical health and safety.
An individual who has been suffering from chronic diabetes, among other individuals whose kidneys are at high risks of failing, for example, may be required to undergo a kidney transplantation operation if he or she wants to survive without having to undergo hemodialysis treatments one to two times every week. In that case, the patient would be left with three choices—to continuously undergo dialysis treatments—a requisite medical treatment for patients with kidney failure to survive which is not only painful and expensive but also has to be performed on a regular basis because it basically replaces the functions of the kidneys that have been lost as a result of the patient’s underlying conditions; to look for a viable organ donor either in the legal or black market, arrange a deal with a hospital or any adequately staffed and or equipped medical facility, and then proceed with either a legal or an illegal organ transplantation operation. It is worthy to note that aside from being expensive, the second option involves a great deal of effort because a potential donor organ has to be available and even after that, there is still a great deal of work to do . The last choice would most likely be the least chosen one because it involves the patient doing neither of the two choices we identified.
Definitions, Background Information about Human Organ Transplantation
Instead of spending money and effort undergoing a hemodialysis treatment or an organ transplantation operation, the patient would just have to do nothing and wait for him to die. Although most patients would consider to this third option to be absurd or even illogical, some patients especially those who have been diagnosed with medical conditions that require an immediate organ transplant in order for them to survive, are forced to take that third choice (the one that involves doing nothing) either because of their lack of capability to afford regular hemodialysis treatments or even undergo an organ transplantation operation which is considerably more expensive. Besides, the act of donating organs in exchange for a certain amount of monetary compensation is still considered to be illegal and unethical in many countries.
According to the World Health Organization “the procurement of organs for transplantation involves the removal of organs from the bodies of deceased persons. This removal must follow legal requirements, including the definition of death and consent” . It is also important to note that it is the World Health Organization who classified the act of donating an organ (e.g. blood, liver, kidney, lungs, or any form of body tissue) in exchange of monetary or any form of compensation as illegal and unethical.
As mentioned earlier, there can be many individual conditions and circumstances that can make an individual want or need to undergo an organ transplantation operation. Often, organ transplantation is considered as the only medically viable solution to prevent patient mortality secondary to any form of end state organ failure. Patients who have been diagnosed with liver or heart failure, for example, may not be able to last a few days to weeks without undergoing an operation to replace their dead or non-functioning organs.
It is also often easy to just mention the requirements to treat an end state organ failure through transplantation. The problem often lies with the execution, specifically on the part wherein the hospital or the patient’s family members would have to find the donor organ required for the organ transplantation. Currently, there are numerous factors that prevent patients of end state organ failure from successfully and easily solving their organ transplantation problems.
First Argument for Legalization: Legalization of this System would exploit donors
Firstly, donating organs in exchange of monetary compensation is still considered to be illegal and unethical in almost all countries . At this point in the history of human organ transplantation, Iran appears to be the only country that has a systematized and legal system of regulating human organ transplantation. It is worth mentioning that in the past decade that is in the early twentieth century there are other countries that have legalized systems of human organ transplantation.
Examples of such countries include but may not be limited to China, India, and the Philippines. Because of the legalization of the human organ transplantation in these countries in the past, the international demand for black market-obtained organs and tissues dramatically decreased because most end state organ failure patients readily opted to obtain donated organs via the legal way. However several major problems were encountered.
There have been recorded cases in the Philippines wherein organ donors were fraudulently promised unrealistic monetary compensations in exchange for donating their organs. In those cases, what the donors received were monetary compensations considerably lower than what was promised to them. The fact that these scenarios occurred within a legalized framework of human organ transplantation (i.e. in the Philippines) means that there are a lot of ethical and legal loopholes in a system where organ transplantation is legalized.
Another problem that can be encountered here would those that happened to China and India. Some of the patients who received donor organs in these two countries reported suffering from another incident of end state organ failure. As a result, they were advised to undergo yet another round of organ transplantation procedures which involves looking for a donor and compensating the donor again.
It may be safe to say that such unfortunate events are caused by the lack of a standardized follow up health care system for patients who have already undergone organ transplants. If patients are adequately treated post-organ transplant operation, then the chances of another end state organ failure occurring would be considerably lessened .
Second Argument for Legalization: Selling Organs is forbidden in Most Major Religions
The most common problem that is related to the religious aspect of donating or receiving organ is related to the standard definition of brain death. Most religious accept that fact that individuals are entitled to make their own decisions and while this may be a plus for proponents of the legalization of organ donation, some religions require meticulous processes which makes it almost impossible for medical professionals to proceed with the option of organ donation.
In the case of Roman Catholics, for example, most of them only approve of the idea of organ donation if the donor organ would be coming from a diseased and not from a live person. The same rule, in fact, applies to Orthodox Jews. Shinto and other not so dominant also disfavor the legalization of organ transplantation suggesting that the body is too sacred to be disassembled and be reassembled even with the advent of new medical techniques and technologies to safely and ethically perform such procedures.
Counterargument
Legalization of human transplantation can potentially save thousands of lives, especially the lives of those who have been spending a significant amount of time in organ donor waiting lines already.
Refutation
However, it is important to note that if the world is going to adapt a legal system of organ transplantation, it has to do it right; that is, in a way that the donors and receivers of the traded organs will have a clear set of rights that they can invoke—something which was almost entirely absent in previous attempts of organ donor legalization.
In the case of China, for example, they attempted to address the long waiting lines for organ donation by harvesting organs from executed and deceased prisoners. According to an entry published in the International Herald Tribune in 2007, at least 90% of the total number of available human organs and tissues in China during the time when human organ transplantation regulations were still lax were from deceased and executed prisoners .
The legality of organ harvesting from this group of people in China was primarily based on confidentiality agreements between the Chinese government and the prisoners. However, after numerous incidents of confidentiality agreement breaches have been recorded and exposed, the Chinese government came under severe scrutiny from the international community and as a result, they were forced to abandon their unsystematic way of regulating organ transplantation.
Basically, the rationale of the international community members who scrutinized the Chinese way of regulation human organ transplantation were based on the grounds that it lacked the standardization required to ensure that the organs collected are safe and from healthy, non-infected people, the definition of which hospitals and medical professionals are allowed to perform any transplantation-related procedures, and who are legally entitled to donate and receive organs.
Recommendation and Conclusion
In summary, there are still more reasons not to fully legalize human organ transplantation compared to the number of reasons that say otherwise. In line with this, it is recommended that policy makers study the matter carefully before making significant changes in the current tight policies against human organ transplantation so that the problems that have been encountered in the past would not recur. It is already a given that the demand for donor organs remain quantitatively high but until such time that a legal and systematic system of human organ transplantation becomes available, human organ transplantation should still be considered illegal, if not just highly regulated.
Works Cited
American Red Cross. "American Red Cross - Statements from Religions ." American Red Cross (2008).
"China Issues Organ Transplant Rules in Attempt to Clean Up Industry." International Herald Tribute (2007).
Fullick, A. "Rebuilding the Body: Organ Transplantation." Heinemann Library (2002): 20.
Schall, J. "A New Outlook on Compensated Kidney Donations." RENALIFE American Association of Kidney Patients (2008).
Scutti, S. "Organ Trafficking is On the Rise, As Transplant Surgeries Increase Around the Globe." Medical Daily (2014).
World Health Organization. "Human Organ Transplantation." World Health Organization (2014): 01.
