Organ Transplants: from donation to trafficking
Compensation for organ donors: The National Organ Transplant Act forbids the offer of any “valuable consideration” in exchange for an organ, however it does allow for “reasonable payments” for expenses, housing and lost wages. In reality, seldom are these “reasonable payments” made and they are often viewed as unethical in the United States. Moreover, organ donation often does not qualify people for sick time or disability pay, and the process can be expensive. As a possible solution to the lack of compensation for organ donors, a group of transplant authorities proposed in October of 2006 that Medicare, which pays for kidney transplants, start reimbursing donors for financial losses and provide follow-up insurance.
In October of 2006, a London hospital’s ethics panel approved what could be the world’s first full-face transplant, though no candidates for the surgery have yet been selected. The Cleveland Clinic in the United States is also working on plans for full-face transplants.
China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used for transplants are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.
Canada’s citizenship and immigration agents have developed internal guidelines for processing visa applications by people who wish to donate organs in Canada, newly released documents show.
University receives $750,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study living-donor lung transplantation.
Do I disagree with the Chinese government decision to allow patients to receive transplanted organs from executed prisioners? No, but depending on their motive. Given the Chinese history on strongly limiting the growth of their population, even by blattantly violating basic human rights, it makes one very suspious to think they are in the business of improving and even prolonging the lives of a small minorty of their population and forginners by offering organs. Taking out the factor of the large sums of money that patients and their loves have to pay to receive these organs, would the number of executions in China decrease? Not likely, but organ transplantations would. For the Chinese government to let the world know that they are operating in good faith, they should have these operations be primarily financed by health insurance, as it is done in most other countries where the poor and not so well-off are offered these organs and the huge factor of money can be limited.
Nevertheless, that still brings up the most important issue, the number of executions in China is alarmingly high!