Market for Organs?

If you were in class today, you’ll realize that unfortunately for me, Kyle has spoiled some comments that I was going to make pertaining to a market for organs. However, I’m going to Blog about it anyways because this is of a huge interest to me since it is my job. No, I do not buy or sell organs, but I am a trained professional at harvesting them. I am on the tissue team, so I usually harvest tendons, bones, skin, veins and nerves! Isn’t it creepy that one of your classmates does that for a living? Anyways, if you’re wondering, I do believe that there should be a market for organs.

Our system right now is not working! Are you an organ donor? Well only about 30% of people in Ohio are registered organ donors, of those people another several percentage of them will not be able to donate because of different reasons (if they’ve been sick a lot through out their life, if they’ve contracted AIDS or hepatitis C, if they have abnormalities on their body, if they died in a way that harmed the body). On top of that, even if you are a registered organ donor, organ companies default to asking your families for consent. Which means even if you REALLY REALLY wanted to donate your organs, but your parents say no, then guess what? We can’t take them! So be sure to talk to your family and make sure they know what you want!

And since people would only benefit from the money while they’re alive, it should be done in a way where firms will buy rights to your organs when you die. I think this is a good way to keep each individual healthier as well. If the firm initially gives you a certain amount of money when you’re 18 and says that every 5 years after this day if you do a physical with them, and they find out that you’re living healthy (not smoking, drinking excessively, contracting abnormal amount of diseases) then you will be paid an additional amount at that time, wouldn’t we as a society live smarter and healthier?

I also think it’s important to have a market for organs because right now demand is at an insane low. People are dying all around us because one, not enough people are organ donors, and two even if there are organs available, it is hard to find the correct match for every individual patient since the waitlist takes into account several different factors including biological (blood types and age), and also timeline (time till death, and time you’ve been on the waitlist). So what we have right now is a shortage of organs, our quantity demanded is excessive compared to our quantity supplied. And if I remember correctly about what Kyle said about the existence of a shortage “well, we are doing something wrong!” Someone is obviously not happy in this situation because of the ceiling price at zero meaning suppliers can’t increase their prices which ultimately means that supply and demand can’t reach equilibrium!

Now I’ve heard of a lot of reason about why we shouldn’t have a market for organs and I would just like to address a few of them. 1. Wouldn’t people try and steal your organs in order to cash in? Yes, I believe that is a possibility if we start a market for organs but I personally don’t think it will be more than what we have right now with what’s going on in the black market. And also, I think it would help if we make it so that people can only get paid if it’s their own organs. But the main objection I have against this concern is the actual thieving of said organs. Our company goes through an enormous amount of training and procedures before we can even go out into the field. The extremes we go to make sure everything is sterile are pretty ridiculous but totally necessary. We drop off all of our instruments at OSU hospital for them to sterilize. Just 2 days ago actually, one of the companies that we send our harvest, LifeNet, actually came in and talked to us about our contaminations since they test those to make sure nothing is growing on there that’s potentially dangerous. If all of that’s not hard enough, There’s a pretty serious time limit on these organs, I just think it would be difficult to be able to harvest it, package it, send it to a company who will processes it all illegally. Granted I might be dead wrong about all of this, but this is just what I personally think.

2. Wouldn’t the poor or the addicts exploit this system and sell more of their organs? Now what is wrong with that? It’s not exactly exploiting the system if the poor wants to sell more of their organs in order to make some money. Isn’t this a great way for them to get some money and use it in a way to help pull themselves out of the debt they’re in? And I really don’t know how much drug addicts can benefit from this system since most companies I assume will turn away majority of their organs for being in bad conditions on account of the heavy drinking or smoking.

I think these two concerns are the major complaints that I hear when we are talking about a market for organs and since this blog is getting pretty long, I’m not going to go in to the other concerns. So I hope you guys found my little rant interesting, and I wish you all good luck on your Finals and have a great spring break!