I assume you must also be for gun control since someone somewhere might pick up a gun and use it in a criminal manner. Why should we pass laws that say although its not a crime to sell your kidney someone may do something illegal and therefore we can't let anybody do anything?

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Its better to have fussed and crabbed then never to have fussed at all - Lucy

No, it would have the exact opposite affect. If it was legal to sell your kidney in an open market then there would be no need for a black market.

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"If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants - you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them." - Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Coyote Blog


Americans Indians support oil drilling in ANWR.

A+ Completely valid point and well made

A black market exists for alchohol and tobacco despite those being legal.

By the way coyote, I'm sure you could sell your kidney right now if you really wanted to......

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"If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you." -- Billy Wilder

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied." -- Otto Von Bismark

A black market exist for those items because of the onerous taxation of the product.

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Its better to have fussed and crabbed then never to have fussed at all - Lucy

because no one without money will be able to afford to buy new organs.
and most people will no longer want to use the organ donor regestry which gives organs to people based on a list and not according to their finacial means, when they could be paid for their organs instead

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Psych Majors are JUNG and HORNEY

Freedom is SEXY

I agree that in most markets what you said would be true, however the organ market is a bit different than most other markets. Since organ transplants are so controlled, the black market is actually pretty small in the US. You need to have a hospital to perform the insertion surgery, and there is only one distribution point, so it is fairly easy to know where the organs come from. Currently no hospital could pretend not to know where the organ came from, so it is very difficult to have doctors or hospitals willing to use black market organs. This keeps the market extremely small.

If you open up the distribution, this would change. It would create the possibility of denial for hospitals and doctors, and this is what would spur the black market in organs.

From a liability standpoint I would think hospitals would want to know exactly where the organs came from. Would they not need to know the organs were indeed compatible. I doubt that hospitals would last very long if they transplanted organs that ended up killing the patients.

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Its better to have fussed and crabbed then never to have fussed at all - Lucy

Perhaps, though I am sure the hospitals would rather just have the patients sign disclaimers for any potential liability, and given the choice of death without the transplant, I doubt too many patients would refuse.

Now I know that it is possible to create a set of laws to mitigate some of the abuse, but I just don't have the faith in the government to do so. Furthermore, I do think you are opening up a pandora's box when you put a profit motiff into organ donations.

Even the disclaimers can be overridden if it can be shown gross negligence on the part of the hospital. Besides, the only law you would need could be one that would not allow hospitals to require such a disclaimer.

I think you are making way too much out of this.

This post is graded A++

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Its better to have fussed and crabbed then never to have fussed at all - Lucy