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Senate Report accompanying the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act
[Taken from U.S. Congressional Serial Set No. 13557, Senate Report 98-382 (98th Congress,
2nd Session)]
p.4:"the prohibition on the buying and selling of human organs is directed at
preventing the for-profit marketing of kidneys and other organs." Our
Senators didn't say why. Presumably, they wished to prevent the poor from being induced to
sell a kidney while they're still alive, as has happened in
India and other countries. But, as many economists and philosophers have noted,
the ban they enacted is unnecessarily broad, in that it
also prevents the sale of cadaver organs. By unnecessarily banning cadaveric market
activity, they greatly lessened the supply of organs
available for transplantation. Any intelligent person who has taken freshman
economics could have predicted this outcome. This purposeful restriction of market
activity is especially puzzling, given that on the very next page of their report they
state: (p. 5) "The Congress finds and declares that---(1) the lack of
suitable donor organs for patients awaiting surgery is a major obstacle to all organ
transplant programs; (2) a number of patients waiting for donor organs face certain death
within a predictable time period".
Later on they state (pp. 16-17), "It is the sense of the Committee that
individuals or organizations should not profit by the sale of human organs for
transplantation..."
So, it's morally OK to profit by selling toothpaste which can save
someone's teeth, but not OK to profit by selling organs which can save someone's life?
This is what our Congress considers to be a rational standard of morality?
Maybe they'd really like to ban profits altogether, and establish a socialist worker's
paradise. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)
Further along in the same section they state: "The
Committee believes that human body parts should not be viewed as commodities..."
I'll admit it is a bit macabre to think about a
commodities market for human organs, with listings of the going rates for various organs.
But it's not like they're going to be listed in the financial pages. And
while it's comforting to think we're NOT composed of interchangeable parts, like our cars
or computers, the fact is that, to an extent, we are. Human body parts already ARE
commodities, in the sense of being valuable things that are transported from place to
place. (Here at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, I've seen people in Tranplant
Surgery walking around with Igloo coolers, and I don't think they're carrying their
lunches.) While Congress hides from reality, thousands of innocent people die each
year. Of course, when a politician needs a transplant, they don't
have to wait long, if the 1993 case of then-Governor of Pennsylvania Bob Casey is any
indication. (He got a combined heart-liver transplant within HOURS of going on
the waiting list.) |