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Human Organs for Sale, Legally...........?

Tuesday, April 29, 2008 by Unknown

Is it really all that bad to allow the free market to work it's "magic" when it comes to organ donation?

I guess to most people it is, but, I'm not the only person who thinks it could be a good idea. Stephen J. Dubner thinks it may be a good idea, too.

From the Freakonomics blog @ NYTimes.com:

Here is an oversimplification of a complex problem:

1. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, a sick or dying human being can receive a transplanted organ from another human being.

2. Some of those organs must inevitably come from cadavers: i.e., you can’t give your heart to someone else and still live. But some transplanted organs can come from living people. Chief among them is the kidney: we are born with two but can live with one.

3. As the science has improved, there has been a huge increase in demand for transplantable organs. But the supply has not kept up with demand. The kidney waiting list gets longer every year, and every year more people die while still on the waiting list. The supply of kidneys from both cadavers and living donors is insufficient.

More here.

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