Body parts for sale

The reason that so many people are undergoing dialysis and dying due to kidney failure is simply because people lack the incentive to give up their spare kidney.

As with most disconnects between need and supply, there is a ready solution: money. The current ban on being paid for kidney donations is misguided and indecently paternalistic.

The government should set a minimum price that will be paid by the health system for a kidney. This should reflect the pain and suffering involved in donating the organ and the increased risk to the donor’s future health. Once this threshold, say $50,000, is set hospitals should be able to purchase kidneys at sums not below this amount. The purchase price should increase until equilibrium emerges between demand and supply of kidneys.

But won’t this lead to the exploitation of the poor who will be coerced into selling their kidneys? No.

While there is no doubt that the poor will disproportionately sell their kidneys, this no more amounts to exploitation than the fact that it is the same people who spend their lives selling their labour cheaply to the wealthy, in the form of cleaning toilets and working in (legal) brothels.

While some kidney donors might blow the $50,000 plus, many will use it wisely as a springboard for financial security by, for example, using it as a home deposit. Poor people are financially challenged. But they are not dumb. They are capable of making informed, self-regarding autonomous choices.

Our bodies are no less an asset than our time and resourcefulness. In fact this is the one asset that is possessed equally by the rich and the poor. There is no principled basis for not allowing the poor to recoup this asset.

The fallacy of the argument that benevolence should be the only motivation driving organ transplants is highlighted by the fact surgeons and hospital make thousands of dollars transplanting organs, as do drug companies who provide follow up medication. The only person who misses out on the cash is the one that gave the most - the donor. Rarely is paternalism so vulgar.

Of course, some kidney donors down the track will themselves require a kidney transplant if their only kidney fails. But this won’t be problem, because under the proposed scheme there will always be a ready supply of donors at any point in time.

Critics will object that this proposal will lead us down the slippery slope of (suicidal) people wanting to sell hearts and other non-spare parts organs. They are wrong. A clear distinction can be made between essential and non-essential organs and body parts - such as kidneys and bone marrow.

Law-makers need to take of heed of this - it is a matter of life and death.