I recently noticed that I would need to renew my driver's license in the near future. On the back of the license, there is a place where one can sign his or her name to allow his or her organs to be donated in the event of death. Although I have always signed this form in the past, I have decided not to do so in the future.
I started thinking about this subject after reading the case of Moore v. Regents of the University of California. In this case, a patient agreed to allow doctors to remove his diseased spleen. The doctors knew, but did not tell the patient, that the cells from this spleen were potentially valuable to their research.
A few years later, the doctors obtained a patent on research involving the spleen cells, and the value was alleged to be more than $3 billion. Moore sued, but the Supreme Court of California decided Moore could not sue for conversion.
Conversion is, generally speaking, when someone converts someone else's property into something used for his or her own purposes. Justice Armand Arabian's concurring opinion in Moore "suggests that the majority's conclusion is informed by the precept that it is immoral to sell human body parts for profit." Since when?
Every day, the human body and its parts are legally bought and sold in the United States. People sell their labor, sex, sperm, ova and plasma. But in the Moore case, as with organs, apparently the selling of certain body parts is considered "immoral."
I have to wonder whether the doctors in the Moore case would have a different view of conversion if someone from a competing laboratory had broken into their lab, stolen the cells from their refrigerator, and developed the research that generated the profits. I bet those doctors would scream conversion in that situation, and the courts would likely have upheld the concept. So, it seems that only the patient is not allowed to use his own body parts as a basis for profit.
The same patient would not have been allowed to take home 'his' spleen and display it with under glow lights on his fireplace mantel. But it is somehow O.K. for the doctors to decide what to do with that spleen, including using it for a basketball or making a profit off it, even if the spleen's former host cannot. Therefore, it is acceptable for others to decide what to do with your body parts, although you cannot.
In Third World countries, many poverty-stricken individuals sell organs, usually a kidney. These people generally receive $2,000-$3,000. A kidney transplant costs $250,000. This hardly seems fair, although perhaps if selling organs wasn't illegal, a more equitable portion might go to the donor patient. This would enable them to not only better their situation, but to afford the badly needed medical aftercare that might help them to continue living with only one kidney.
Although it is society's fault that these people are forced to live in such conditions and feel they must make a choice of whether to sell a kidney in order to feed and shelter their family, the World Medical Association formally states that "…payment for organs and tissues for donation and transplantation should be prohibited. A financial incentive compromises the voluntariness of the choice.... Organs suspected to have been obtained though commercial transaction should not be accepted for transplantation."
I can only wish that those influential enough to publish such statements were as concerned with poverty.
Until we live in a society that could give all of its citizens food, shelter and medical care without being concerned solely with the Almighty Dollar, more affluent members should not dictate their position on altruism, which they can afford to have, to those who cannot.
Consider the fictional story of "John Q.," a man who captured hostages in a hospital to induce doctors to give his son a transplant that Mr. Q. could not afford, nor would his insurance plan cover.
Now imagine the story a bit differently. Suppose Mr. Q. had died in a car accident on the way to the hospital, but his organs were intact and acceptable for transplant. The same society that discourages organ sales would actually expect this same man (who was unable to afford an organ transplant for his son) to give up his own organs for transplant without compensation.
The doctors who perform organ transplants expect compensation for their services. So do the anesthesiologists, the nurses, the pilot flying the organ to the hospital… and the organ recipient gets another chance at life. In most cases, the donor is expected to be altruistic enough to be satisfied with merely receiving a thank-you card.
Therefore, unless someone ponies up the dough to put my kids through college if I die, I'll keep my organs with me in my coffin. And whoever needs them will surely be happy to keep their thank-you card, since the value of the two things are apparently the same in today's economy-based society with its warped values.
I refuse to contribute to it.
