ENG-106
Legalizing the Sale of Organs: Fair or Not?
1
, To sell or not to sell, that is the question in the controversial topic of organ selling.Every
single person has organs and needs them to function. What happens when a person’s organ
failstheir body, and that person needs a transplant? That person gets put on a waiting list that
sometimes could take years. The transplant list is so long that some people die while waiting for
a new organ. Is it fair that there is a way to decrease the transplant waiting list and save so many
lives, and yet it is still considered illegal in the United States? Fair means just; and what might
be fair to one person does not seem fair to the other. It is not just or fair that some people are
having to turn to the black market in order to live a longer life. People get panicked and turn to
the black market for organs. The facts all remain, that the market for organ selling is not going
away but rather the opposite. When there is a need for something so great in this world as the
preservation of life through the sale of organs,then there is an opportunity for illegal activity.
Making the sale of human organs legalcan save lives, give a fair financial incentive to donors
who are put at risk, and would slow the sale of organs on the black market.
How many lives could be saved by the legalization of organ selling. While men, women,
and children wait on an organ donation list, there is something that can be done about this. The
organ transplant list is over 109,000 as of September 2020 (Organ Donation Statistics, 2020). A
story done by PBS Newshour looks at Jairo Acevedo, who is a kidney dialysis patient. He has
gone in for the last 7 years about three times a week for dialysis treatments, and he pays
approximately $100,000 per year in order to receive those treatments (Solman, 2018). The last
time he checked where his name was on the list was about 2 years ago and there was still 30,000
people ahead of him (Solman, 2018). What is fair about how much money Jairo Acevedo is
spending every year on dialysis when this money could be given to an individual who needed it.
If a person does not agree with legalizing organ sales or does not think it is “fair” to compensate
2
Legalizing the Sale of Organs: Fair or Not?
1
, To sell or not to sell, that is the question in the controversial topic of organ selling.Every
single person has organs and needs them to function. What happens when a person’s organ
failstheir body, and that person needs a transplant? That person gets put on a waiting list that
sometimes could take years. The transplant list is so long that some people die while waiting for
a new organ. Is it fair that there is a way to decrease the transplant waiting list and save so many
lives, and yet it is still considered illegal in the United States? Fair means just; and what might
be fair to one person does not seem fair to the other. It is not just or fair that some people are
having to turn to the black market in order to live a longer life. People get panicked and turn to
the black market for organs. The facts all remain, that the market for organ selling is not going
away but rather the opposite. When there is a need for something so great in this world as the
preservation of life through the sale of organs,then there is an opportunity for illegal activity.
Making the sale of human organs legalcan save lives, give a fair financial incentive to donors
who are put at risk, and would slow the sale of organs on the black market.
How many lives could be saved by the legalization of organ selling. While men, women,
and children wait on an organ donation list, there is something that can be done about this. The
organ transplant list is over 109,000 as of September 2020 (Organ Donation Statistics, 2020). A
story done by PBS Newshour looks at Jairo Acevedo, who is a kidney dialysis patient. He has
gone in for the last 7 years about three times a week for dialysis treatments, and he pays
approximately $100,000 per year in order to receive those treatments (Solman, 2018). The last
time he checked where his name was on the list was about 2 years ago and there was still 30,000
people ahead of him (Solman, 2018). What is fair about how much money Jairo Acevedo is
spending every year on dialysis when this money could be given to an individual who needed it.
If a person does not agree with legalizing organ sales or does not think it is “fair” to compensate
2
