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Ivory Xu Ms.Moore English 11 December 2015
Human Organ Trafficking Organ transplantation is a kind of surgery which takes a person’s (the donor's) organ, and transplant it to another person’s body. This surgery is now very developed and mature, which makes it common in our life. However, human organ trading is still illegal in most of the countries in the world, many countries would only allow people to voluntarily donate their organ to hospital. In this paper, I will talk about how is human organ transplantation affecting people’s life on both positive and negative sides, and how people are going to solve the problems in organ trafficking.
The transplantation of body usually includes organs and tissues. The most common organs that were transplanted are the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, intestine, and thymus. Organ transplantation is really important for people because many of the serious patient were cured because of this technology. Before this technology was invented, many people were killed by cancer, congenital heart diseases, or many other diseases which were hard to cure, however, nowadays, human organ transplantation allow us to replace the organs that are sick with a new and healthy one. Although we still don’t know how to cure cancer or many congenital diseases human have, this technology can save more lives. But there are other things to be considered about, Every year there are 90,000 people need the surgery of organ transplantation but last year there were only 17,000 surgeries. (Schachter) Data shows that even though this technology saves
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people’s life, it is still limited: this kind of surgery is in great demand, while there are not enough donors to give their organ to patients, so basically, most of the organs that were transplanted are from dead bodies (of course they can choose whether or not to donate their body before they are dead). Consider about this data: “More than half of those were from dead donors, with another 3,000 from living donors. ” (Schachter) Also, according to Huang jiefu, the minister of the China Health Department, China has little volunteers to donate their body, for last 2 years there were only 546 donors who want to donate their organ, so that they have to use the organ from condemned prisoners. Huang also state that, the organ from condemned prisoners are more likely to infected by bacteria and fungus, which makes the organ transplantation harder to function. (Huo) It is certain that fresh organ from alive donor is better for the transplantation, and there are a great amount of patients who demand it, and this allow human organ black market to function, which is a market where people can sell their organ to get money, and where the patient can get the fresh organ.
However, black market is not that nice, money and private benefit can cause serious problems. The price of a heart in the black market can fetch up to 1 million Euro. With such great benefit on money, people often don’t care about other things. Organ trafficking in black market can sometimes be terrible, because most people who sells their kidney are young men, who doesn’t care about their own body too much but only need money. They go to the black market, sell their kidney and get paid, however, they will never know if the doctors there are good enough to do this kind of surgery, or if the tools and the environment is clean enough for them to prevent infections. In order to lower the cost, people who run the black market will hire inexperienced doctors to hold the surgery, maybe even a vet, so many donors might just die during the surgery. Also, they may use the surgery tools over and over again without proper clean
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ups, so that the patient might easily get bacteria and other infection. HIV and AIDS might also be infected because of the uncleaned needle tubing or tools. Thus, this system is extremely unfair to the donors. For the patients, they received the organs that can save their lives by paying, for the sellers in the black market, they gain a huge profit because of the price difference, however for the donors, they risk their lives to sell a part of their body, and received only money, “The sellers, therefore, would be exploited, and would primarily come from the poorest countries, selling their organs to the highest bidder out of desperation.” (Schachter)
Also, the huge benefit of organ trading can sometimes drives people crazy. Some people may even murder to get human organ for them to sell. “In May this year, an eight-year-old British schoolgirl died at a clinic in India, and her family say they suspect she was “murdered” by medics intent on harvesting her organs.” (Bindel) It is said that “Children, especially those from poor backgrounds or children with disabilities, are often targeted.” (Bindel) This kind of action is really against humanity and moral, which is terrified. Due to the development of organ black market, terrible and unfair things happened, and these are all the disadvantage of human organ transplantation.
However, organ transplantation can not be stopped, it is still a great technology which saves people’s life. A huge amount of people need this technology, but its disadvantage is also very serious, and that’s why many countries consider human organ trafficking an illegal thing to do. “Millions of people suffer from kidney disease, but in 2007 there were just 64,606 kidneytransplant operations in the entire world.” (Tabarrok) Although black market is dangerous, and it contains many serious problems, as the WHO (World Health Organization) estimate, about 20% of the kidney transplantation is done due to the black market trades. The demand of human organ
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is huge, but the supply can’t satisfies the demand, if we let the organ trafficking legalized, it might benefit more people. (Gregory) Professor Nadey Hakim, transplant surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, London, states that if organ trafficking stay illegal, it might cause bigger problem: "As this trade is going on anyway, why not have a controlled trade where if someone wants to donate a kidney for a particular price that would be acceptable? If it is done safely, the donor will not suffer.” (Scratcher) If the trafficking is supported by standard hospital, the donors will not have to worry about having a vet doing his surgery, the safety of the donors will be increase, the rate of donors been infected by other disease will decrease, also the patients will receive higher quality of organs, this will benefit both sides. Iran is the only country in the world which legalize the organ trafficking, although the system is not good enough, it is still the “only one country in the world does not suffer from an organ shortage” (Hippen) In order to solve the problem in organ transplantation and save more lives, people should work out a way to improve the system.
Organ transplantation saves people’s life, but it also cause serious problems. It can cure many diseases, it can also cause murder. Although it is a live saving technology, morality problems are also linked to it, and business is involved to it. Many people said it is illegal to trade body organ because human’s body part cannot be examined by money, however, the huge benefit of selling organ is driving people to crack down on crime and even kill people. People are still debating on whether we should or not legalize the organ trafficking, but whether it is legal or not, people are doing it, so why shouldn't the government provide a safer way for them?
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Works Cited ［1］Schachter, Abby. “The case for legal organ sales.” Reason.com. n.p., 11 Nov. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. ［2］Bindel, Julie. “Organ trafficking: a deadly trade.” The Telegraph. n.p., 01 Jul. 2013. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. ［3］Tabarrok, Alex. “The Meat Market.” The Wall Street Journal.n.p., 08 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. ［4］Gregory, Anthony. “Why Legalizing Organ Sales Would Help to Save Lives, End Violence.” The Atlantic.n.p., 09 Nov. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. ［5］Hippen, Benjamin. “Organ Sales and Moral Travails: Lessons from the Living Kidney Vendor Program in Iran.” Cato Institute.n.p., 20 March. 2008. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
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