Reply To: Should Selling Organs be Illegal? (Not a Halachic Debate)

I think this might be a nice addition to the discussion. Here is an editorial from the Boston Globe (by: JEFF JACOBY, printed on July 5th of this year) about the liver transplant received by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Apparently, the only thing his money enabled him to do was to register on the transplant waiting list at numerous locations in the USA.

Yet when it comes to the donation of human organs, countless people believe that the market must be prevented from functioning.

The result of our misguided altruism-only organ donation system is much the same: too few organs and too much death. More than 100,000 Americans are currently on the national organ waiting list. Last year, 28,000 transplants were performed, but 49,000 new patients were added to the queue. As the list grows longer, the wait grows deadlier, and the shortage of available organs grows more acute. Last year, 6,600 people died while awaiting the kidney or liver or heart that could have kept them alive. Another 18 people will die today. And another 18 tomorrow. And another 18 every day, until Congress fixes the law that causes so many valuable organs to be wasted, and so many lives to be needlessly lost.