Argumentative Essay: America Should Legalize Organ Sales

For an individual with a terminal organ disease to live with the knowledge that there is a uncomfortably big chance of not ever receiving a donated organ, it is genuinely terrifying; yet, there is nothing to be done and the person is helpless before their fate. Around the world, millions of human beings face this very circumstance with little hope of living a long, plentiful life as there are not enough altruistically donated organs to match the demand. Even in first world countries, such as the United States of America, there is an immense struggle to keep the ill alive and find a solution to this crisis. To find a solution, humanity must keep an open mind to possibilities in a realm previously dismissed: organ sales. In order to save citizen’s

As of this moment, citizens are dying because potential donors are not willing to give up their organs when it will not benefit them in any way. Losing an organ can actually harm a living person due to the lack of its function and the possibility that the other organ will be damaged if it is a paired organ, like kidneys for example. Others remain uneducated of the crisis America is facing and do not donate organs after death. What is needed to save lives is an incentive and education regarding the subject. In the country of Sadia Arabia, they have created a successful program where organ sales are legal, and their rates of organs being donated has skyrocketed (Al Sebayel, n.d.). Not only are they progressing towards saving thousands of lives, but they are also lowering crime rates in the organ-based black market. An incentive they utilize is to pay for a cadaver’s funeral cost once the organ has been removed from the body (Al Sebayel, n.d.). This action has persuaded an innumerable amount of people to donate their organs after death to keep others living and financially help their family. In addition to providing a monetary incentive to those who donate after death, America can also lower insurance premiums or give a small monetary compensation for live donors. With this being legalized, donors will not have to worry about health costs after surgery and

Society currently passes wealth from the patient to the health care companies who overcharge and hoard the collected money (Boyer, p. 314, 2012). Instead of the full monetary amount of the organ going to the already money-saturated medical companies, a small cut can be sided for donors who give their organs to medical organizations for ill patients. Furthermore, that same small cut of money can be utilized for deceased individual’s burial costs, and in return, more organs are contributed. To prevent corruption of this solution, “proposed regulations have ranged from government-imposed price discrimination or subsidies based on income levels, to mandating that donors complete educational courses on the risks of donation, to requiring donors to purchase “donor insurance” to mitigate any unforeseeable health complications that may arise in the future,” (Boyer, p. 325, 2012). With these policies, no donor would be exploited and all potential health risks will be covered by a specific donor-only