If you believe that people should be able to benefit from the sale of their organs (through sale), why are you against tax breaks?

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People who donate organs/blood should have a bigger chance to receive a organ when they need one later in their life. But no money.

The problem with that is that most of the "best" organs (heart, etc.) will only be available after they die. So a program that rewards a donator "later in their life" will not make a difference.

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Because someone else bears the cost of that tax break other than the receiver of the organ.

@Rob_G - why shouldn't people be allowed to make money from their organs?

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

You know, I should have known that would be your reason. It fits nicely with your other views.

I think I also know the answer to my immediate question but let me ask it anyway: Should the government prescribe the price(s) that people can charge for their organs or should we allow a market to develop that will dictate the cost?

And, if you believe that the market should dictate (which is likely), should we allow people to to sell organs that will cause their death (i.e. heart)? Should we decide that people have a privacy right to sell their organs even if it causes their death?

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The best daily political cartoons can be found here:

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Yes, they should be able to sell the organs that will cause their death. To be honest, this is kind of a new idea for me because I really never considered it. It seems like a no-brainer for me (maybe I sold mine?!). There is no property more obviously private as your own body, not being able to do what you want with it seems completely alien to me.

The only argument against it that I can come up with now is that organs would be relegated to those who can afford them. Of course, this has some validity but there's no reason to think that ALL people will choose to sell their organs, some will gladly donate them; just as some people choose to pay exhorbitant taxes yet still gladly give of their time and money to various charities. In addition, there's no reason to believe that health insurance policies won't compete on how extensively they cover the cost of organ replacement, whether to include the cost of purchasing that organ or not.

I think it would be overly presumptious to state that the pool of available organs would decline. It's just as possible that the pool of organs available would increase. For example, I only just became an organ donor this year when I renewed my driver's license, it just wasn't top of mind until I was presented with the question on the form. If I knew that my family could make some money off of my dead and bloating carcass, then I would certainly fill out the paperwork before I died. Just a little extra for them. Additionally, there are probably those with terminal illnesses who have unaffected organs ready for harvest. They could choose to terminate their lives while both providing new life for someone else and some money for their heirs. I'm sure they would rather their death have some benefit rather than simply waste away.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Startup,
You would never find a doc that will effectively murder a patient for a heart, lung or both kidneys. I doubt that any doctor would remove eyes from a living patient, blinding him, even if he consented...

The organ sale needs to be highly regulated, it should never be a financial gain for the individual large enough to drive the desire to "donate/sell" their body parts.

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You must be out of your mind! Terminally ill patients will not have any organs left to harvest as they all will be affected sooner or later. If not by the dissease, it may be from the medication.

Terminate their life to earn a buck? That is completely against any morals of human kind. You tossed the "to save them some suffering in" to win people over, but in all reality, one would have to terminate ones life almost on diagnosis in order to be sellable. That would mean that someone with cancer would have to kill himself right away and even then it is not garuanteed that it has not spread. Your ideas are unrealistic and opposed to humanity. Organ donors save life after they die. Not die to save a life, not die to make a buck.

Go to China, you can order your organ. They find a donor, charge him, execute him or her and voila one heart for Mr. Rich. I couldn't live with that!

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Unlike most people, I don't believe that morals should be the foundation of law. If someone wants to kill himself to provide some money to his family (or whomever might be the beneficiary of his will), I think that is fine.

The only requirement I would place on the practice would be that people who were going to sell organs that would result in their death would have to get a psychologist to sign off that they were mentally sound.

I couldn't either.

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The best daily political cartoons can be found here:

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Because that money has to come from somewhere, and most likely that 'somewhere' is the receiver of the organ. This would mean a person with a lot of money would have a much larger chance to find a 'new' organ than someone with less money. I think that's wrong.