[Faline]

People should be allowed to sell a kidney for £28,000 to tackle a shortage of donors, a researcher has said.
Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at the University of Dundee, said that selling the organ could help pay off university debts or give donors the chance to do a kind deed.
The rate of kidney donation from people who have died has not kept up with the need for organs and plateaued at around 2,000 a year in the UK.



In a Personal View article published on the British Medical Journal website, the social scientist suggested a move towards regulated paid provision for live donors' kidneys, with the organs allocated in the same 'fair' way as they are now.
Mrs Roff said: 'One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now.

'But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average annual income in the UK, currently about £28,000, it would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans.'
She added: 'So it's time to begin to explore how to pilot paid provision of live kidneys in the UK under strict rules of access and equity.

'We need to extend our thinking beyond opt-in and opt-out to looking at how we can make it possible for those who wish to do so to express their autonomy in the same way as current donors are encouraged to do by making available a healthy kidney for a fee that is not exploitative.'
Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association's medical ethics committee, said organ donation should be 'altruistic and based on clinical need' and that there was a 'small but significant' health risk to living kidney donation.
He told the BBC: 'Introducing payment could lead to donors feeling compelled to take these risks, contrary to their better judgement, because of their financial situation.'

A spokeswoman for the Human Tissue Authority told the BBC the organisation must 'continue to ensure that living organ donation is something people enter into freely and without financial reward'.
The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics (SCHB) said it was very concerned about the proposal.
Dr Calum MacKellar, SCHB director of research, said: 'To place a financial value on human beings or parts of human beings undermines the inherent dignity of the human person and the innate as well as unmeasurable worth of all individuals.'
The council said a market for human body parts would only be likely as long as there were people poor enough to sell an organ and that it was therefore unethical to utilise financial pressures to obtain human body parts for transplantation.

[kellyhound]

what happened to this ?

23 Dec 2002
Scientists have grown a miniature human kidney inside a mouse using a technique that could one day mean an end to organ transplants.

Although the kidney was tiny, it was functional, suggesting that patients suffering from organ failure might be able to grow replacements.

it's about time they use stamcells to grow organs in a lab.

[Viking64]

£28,000???? I just rang the butcher and kidneys are vastly cheaper in America.

[sweetsarah]

Originally Posted by Viking64 ↗

£28,000???? I just rang the butcher and kidneys are vastly cheaper in America.

[Faline]

Originally Posted by Viking64 ↗

£28,000???? I just rang the butcher and kidneys are vastly cheaper in America.

[xoij]

I'd still wont sell one of mine.

[zadfrackglutz]

with my luck i would ruin the one remaining with in a few short weeks. but i could always use the money.

[Zodiak]

Sign me the Fuck up! I got two good ones!

[shoottokill]

donate your brain while your at it too

[mrsdahmer]

but if they DO legalize it, it will make it safer for the people who are very poor and taking much larger risks by selling their kidneys to underground markets and getting shady doctors, or people operating on them that are not even licensed to practice medicine. and talk about ethics, this would GREATLY increase a persons chances to actually RECEIVE an organ. and so what if lots of poor people take advantage, wouldnt it be a GOOD thing that they would have something like this to take advantage of? i mean, as opposed to just having their family starve? or becoming homeless? sounds like a good thing to me all the way around. i mean what about those medical research studdies that they pay people to be a part of, its basically the same thing and carries the same risks, sometimes even MORE risks.