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I have known several families who have done kidney donation within their family. Being a match and keeping their loved one off the list for donation.

Which got me thinking, should we be able to sell a kidney?

The average wait time for a kidney can be 3-5 years.

I have known several families who have done kidney donation within their family. Being a match and keeping their loved one off the list for donation. Which got me thinking, should we be able to sell a kidney? The average wait time for a kidney can be 3-5 years.

11 comments

[–] Sarcastaway 1 points (+1|-0) Edited

Its actually legal to sell body parts "for research" if you are a broker, assuming the parts are from a cadaver. This is likely used as a loophole to send transplant material over-seas where transplants can be performed. This is probably why the FBI raided MedCure.

And just in case you needed a reason not blindly to opt into tissue donation...

Marie Gallegos, whose husband’s head was shipped to a dental school in Israel months after he died of a heart attack in May 2017. ... Six hours after he died, she said, an employee from Donate Network of Arizona called to discuss body donation. The employee promised the body would advance medical research and be treated with dignity ... Later that summer, UTN delivered her husband’s ashes, which she buried at a veterans’ gravesite. She said she did not realize the ashes represented only a portion of her husband’s remains. UTN still had his head and in the fall shipped it to the Tel Aviv dental school.

As for you question, I'm on the fence. I'm a libertarian sort of guy, but even I can see the potential for people being coerced into selling a kidney against their will. On the other hand, making it legal would end a very dangerous black market that takes more lives than it saves, and prices for an organ would drop dramatically.

If there was a mandatory 1 year waiting period between the decision and the actual sale, I think most of the drawbacks would be minimized.

[–] Hitchens [OP] 1 points (+1|-0)

If there was a mandatory 1 year waiting period between the decision and the actual sale, I think most of the drawbacks would be minimized.

Interesting idea.

Your above story about the head is dreadful. That poor wife.