Why isn't anyone discussing the glaring problem here?
POOR PEOPLE WILL DONATE MORE OFTEN.
Do you really feel comfortable with a host of single mothers undergoing a major surgery, selling their body parts, in order to feed their kids? The risks of death or permanent injury during the procedure are low, but what are the long term effects of living with only one kidney? What happens if HER lone kidney starts failing?
If we're allowed to be paid for kidneys, why not corneas? You can live with just one eye. For that matter, you can live with just one lung, too. And part of your liver can be removed and still leave you alive and reasonably healthy...probably...for awhile....
Watch for the news stories about the sudden and growing population of former Taco Bell workers walking around with one eye, one kidney, one lung and half a liver. But hey, now their kids can go to college!
Lower socioeconomic classes will be paying for higher ones with their body parts. What you're talking about is a Kazuo Ishiguro horror novel.
And don't tell me it's okay if just for post-mortem donations. There's a reason life insurance companies don't pay out for suicides. Death of a Salesman in a whole new light: you'd be incentivizing suicide in desperate families.
There are much better, more ethical ways to save lives. First, make organ donation an opt-out program, rather than an opt-in. There's volumes of real data suggesting this would work; why doesn't Ms. Satel support that?
Second, open up stem cell research to federal funding.
My God, with these realistic, ethical options on the table, that the first place this woman goes is "I'm rich, need a kidney; you're poor, got an extra," is utterly appalling.
