TV shows glamourize surgeries and crimes and medical mysteries. Oftentimes on CSI and even in real life cases are presented where black market organ harvesting is involved.
We previously talked in class about if cancer trails with children were ethical. The children involved in these trails weren’t being made sicker; however, they sometimes were not receiving the treatments that could potentially make them healthier again.
In today’s day in age, human trafficking is a large issue especially in third world countries and sometimes even in our own backyards. People are taken for a multitude of reasons ranging from sex purposes to organ donations.
I am going to go ahead and say that black market organ harvesting is not ethical. This is it is not like people are going on the national registry to get a new organ because they are terminally ill; it is people who are hoping to make a large sum of money at the expense of someone else’s life. The other shocking part is that sometimes you hear stories of doctors and surgeons who do not know or care where the organs that they are transplanting are coming from. In some U.S. cities and organ can be sold for transplant for $150,000.
On the black market others are selling their organs to pay off debts, like in this article. On the black market, some involving hospital staff set up full surgical theatres whereas in other areas of the market some people set up poorly cleaned areas where infection could be common.
Organ donations are also regulated very differently depending on the country. In the U.S. generally, donations are very highly regulated as stated in this article. In other countries they encourage public donation.
Works Cited:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/reading-between-the-headlines/201311/body-snatchers-organ-harvesting-profit
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-33844080
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031784/Inside-illegal-hospitals-performing-thousands-black-market-organ-transplants-year-200-000-time.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/world/asia/freedom-project-nepals-organ-trail/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/kidneys-sold-online-facebook-organ-donors_n_4936216.html
Personally I feel as though it is not ethical for organs to be sold on the black market. Even though it is an easier way for people to get organs, the method by which the organs are harvested is in no way ethical. Most of these organs are taken illegally and in a unsafe manner.
This is a really controversial topic. Personally my answer to this question is ethical. Because in the hospitals, people always need to wait for the organs that are appropriate to them for a really long time and sometimes they even cannot wait until the hospitals find an organ.
So in my opinion, I think selling and buying organs could be ethical. And in this way, people will have incentives to provide their healthy organs to the sick people, because like kidney, people only need one kidney to survive, and they can give the extra one to save other people’s live. Same as liver, people can cut off a little bit to save someone’s life.