John Stuart Mill's Arguments Against The Legalization Of Organ Selling

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John Stuart Mill’s greatest happiness principle can be applied to support and go against the legalizing of organs selling. There has been argument in support and in repelling the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. This law made the selling of organs and blood marrow illegal. However, it was amended to allow the selling of born marrow and the donor is allowed to receive compensation. Since both born marrow and organs are part of a human’s body, why should one be able to profit off blood marrow and not organs. The issue arises of placing a price on a body part this resembles slavery and treats a class of people as subhuman. Mill would argue it is not about the “right’ (equal and fair, regardless of consequence) it comes down to the “good” (most …show more content…

There are 64,000 people waiting for transplant and 16 die every day. There is on average 42,000 people awaiting kidney transplant. Kidneys are in the highest demand, comprising nearly two-thirds of the waiting list, and you only need one to survive. The counter argument would be only the rich would benefit from having organ selling be legalized since they would be the only ones who could afford to purchase organs. Thereby this system would be taking advantage of the poor. However, if we allow poor people to sell their organs the ones they don’t require they would also be able to benefit from this system. An argument for anti-organ selling would say a person in need of an organ might not be in a position to be able to sell one of their organs, to be able to gain money for the organ he/she require. In this scenario the person can have a family member or friend sell an organ to gain funds for the organ the ill person requires to live. Overall the majority would be happy and if majority of the population is happy and benefit from organ selling this follows the greatest happiness principle by