Organ trade is the exchange of human organs for the purpose of replacing damaged or absent organs. A worldwide shortage of organs available for trade has caused an international organ trade to arise, where people purchase their organs instead of waiting months on a waiting list. It is possible for people of any age to develop the need for an organ transplant at any given moment in life, causing one in this position to wonder, “Should Organ Trade Be Legal in the United States?” The trafficking of organs exists illegally in most countries, as individuals become impatient and desperate for an organ. Buying and selling human organs may cause a person to gain or lose money through the process. At the same time, it is possible for one to either improve …show more content…
A comparison is presented throughout the paper between how the old and elderly are affected by the legalization of organ trade, where the situation is analyzed through economic and scientific lenses for the purpose of determining whether or not the United States should regulate organ trade.
Literature Review
Looking through an economic lens, a poor person would be able to sell organs for money, but will suffer when the rich people buy all the organs before them or cheat them into giving up organs. Considering the situation through the scientific/health lens, the elderly may prosper through organ trade by being able to receive organs more quickly and end up living longer, but might suffer great complications if they decide to donate themselves without being qualified to do so.
Economic
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Resnick (2012) states, “According to anthropologist Monir Moniruzzaman, poor Bangladeshis are being lured in by false ads and lied to in order to get them to comply to giving up an organ” (para. 7). Resnick, who gathered this info from the fieldwork of an anthropologist, argues that poor people aren’t receiving the proper reward for their organs that was promised prior to the transplant. The rich people were the ones putting up ads that promise things such as citizenship or jobs that they never end up providing to the poor, showing that the poor people are risking their health for only a couple hundred dollars to satisfy the rich. Similarly, Parry Wynne from livescience, a scientific news article, presents research conducted in poor areas of Bangladesh, where it is discovered that brokers of organ trafficking tell the story of “the sleeping kidney”(Wynne, 2015), convincing uneducated individuals that they don’t need both kidneys because one is dormant and useless. Based on the results of the research, the author claims that enforcing organ trade will cause people to abuse the system and manipulate others to receive their organs. This research adds another example to strength the negative side of the debate on legalizing organ