Organ Sales And Moral Distress Analysis

Formal Academic Critique of Eduardo Rivera López’s Organ Sales and Moral Distress

The article “Organ Sales and Moral Distress” is written by Eduardo Rivera-Lopez(2006). He explains his viewpoint regarding reasons provided forlegislating the permission of organ sales. He argues that political operators, in unjust organ sale situation are not qualified for (or have lost the moral authority to) offer either the Consequentialist or the Autonomy Argument for legalizing human organ sales. Eduardo Rivera López has a degree in Philosophy (University of Buenos Aires, 1989) and a PhD in Political Science (University of Mainz, Germany, 1994). He is the author of numerous books, among them: The moral assumptions of liberalism (1997), Essays on liberalism

Consequentialist Argumentsupports organ salesbecause it has global beneficial effects, as everyone (buyer and seller) is benefited, and it reduces scarcity of organs for transplant and many lives could be saved. Autonomy Argument favors organ sale since it is autonomy-enhancing factor for seller, as he could have more options and authority now. Then he talks about possible circumstances where organ sale situation would take place. He distinguishes it into two possible kinds: a just one and an unjust one. Then he chooses to adopt the concept of unjust situation to talk about, which he explained is unjust for seller,if it involves severe suffering and deprivation,which however, is avoidable and where political agents are involved but they fail to take measures. He then presents his point that “as the situation that motivates the sale of an organ is an unjust one, the rest of the society (or its political authorities) is not entitled to justify the permission of organ sales by appealing to the benefits that the rest of the society will enjoy from the sales”(Rivera-Lopez, 2006). So, therefore author has delivered his thesis, that it is morally distressing to legalize organ sale as political agents in unjust situation has lost the moral authority to put forward either the Consequentialist or the Autonomy Argument as reasons to

Moreover, he maintained a sophisticated tone throughout the article with fairly easily understood language.He also delivered comprehensive definition of almost all relevant key words and explained it with context to the matter being discussed. Moreover, the structure of article is very effective as it went in order to prove and explain each component of his thesis, so that’s how his thesis is delivered on a strong base in the end. However, his argument was not fair as he failed to evaluate the subject through a wider perspective and restricted the article till his chosen, very specific scenario. He showed a very staunch behavior towards his claim but was pretty unfair towards the opposing argument that he did not evaluate their proposition. Furthermore, he commits logical fallacy of red herring, where he derails from the topic being discussed and discusses irrelevant issues. Also, he encounters fallacy of false analogy where he draws comparison of legalizing decision of organ sale with a negligent father who has to decide whether to allow his son to work, whether eating rats should be allowed in poor society, poor workers should be permitted to work more in bad conditions and slave owner should allow saves to keep personal belonging. These situations cannot be analyzed together as the sensitivity of the