Overcoming the Legal, Moral and Ethical Aspects of This “Black Market”

Would You Buy a Kidney for Yourself or a Family Member if you had no Other Option, Even Though it’s not legal in the United States? Is Five Years in Jail a Price Worth Paying?

Overcoming the legal, moral and ethical aspects of this “Black Market”

GM520: Legal, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Business

April 18, 2005

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INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND

In today’s global economy, a new market is growing fast. This new economic cash crop does not selling babies, drugs or weapons. The new market is for human organs that are used for transplants primarily performed in the eastern countries. In 1984, Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), which criminalized the selling and purchasing of organs punishable by up to five years in prison or a $50,000 fine (42 U.S.C. §274e). This bill was created under the presumption that organ donation should be an act of altruism, that the human body should not be treated as a commodity, and that preventing the buying and selling of organs would prevent potential exploitation and abuses of the system (Davis, n.d. para. 2).

The National Organ Transplant Act led to the establishment of a national system that place recipients on waiting lists and match them to prospective donors. However, reliance on this voluntary system has been an utter failure. The current national system obtains organs almost exclusively from living relatives of recipients or from unrelated cadavers, and thus it has not been able to provide organs at a rate even remotely approaching demand (Young, 1999, para .3)

The well-known shortage of kidneys for transplantation causes much suffering and death for those waiting. Dialysis is a wrenched experience for most patients, rationed in most places and simply unavailable to the majority of patients in most developing countries (Radcliffe-Richards, 1998, 352). People around the world are forced to look at other options when they are faced with life...