Thanks to a tip from Christopher MacDonald from his Business Ethics Blog, we’ve learned that the sale of live kidneys will be permitted in Singapore thanks to new legislation just passed there.
The rationale? Donors should be compensated for their time and effort, but not to be induced into donating. It’s hard to imagine, however, how a five or six figure sum, as reported in the Straits Times, could not be an inducement for those who are at a financial disadvantage and need the cash.
McDonald says that, in spite of himself, he has come to support organ markets. It is true that the current system is not producing enough organs for those who need them–demand far outstrips supply. But I have been more than reluctant to embrace payment for any nation or for any reason out of concern for inducement and the lack of truly informed consent when organ procurement becomes a business. For now, we should rely on altruism until the data suggest from bioethics research that persons, regardless of their socioeconomic status, can sell an organ in a market and be free of inducement and that money doesn’t change people’s minds about how essential their second kidney is.
Summer Johnson, PhD