The Federal Government should permit the sale of human organs for transplantation

Self-Ownership:1. People have no such “right” to know they won’t get a diseased organ. If they are told the risks, and accept them, there is no rights violation involved.2. See 1. Is it an act of aggression if the transplant surgery itself goes wrong, making the doctor a criminal? No, because the patient accepted that there are risks and consented to them.3. Yes it does, if you must necessarily be controlling X to engage in discourse. Which is the case—you must control your entire body in order to be using any part of it.4. It doesn’t matter if the argument provides desirable outcomes. If it’s correct, it shows that I don’t need desirable outcomes. I’m not “assuming” non-consequentialism, I’m proving it. Statistics:1. That source was not my evidence against your “window-period”—that was just me showing that the source Con used earlier did not say what he said it did. My argument against the window-period was the fact that tests have changed. Tests for antibodies do have a significant window period, because there is time in between when the someone is infected with a virus and when the body produces antibodies. But now, as I said, we have tests for the actual viral RNA, which, of course, is present as long as the virus is. Basic biology—if there’s a viral infection, there are viruses, and therefore viral RNA. Which is why people don’t get HIV or hepatitis from blood transfusions anymore, which is why Con can’t cite any recent statistics. Surely, if high rates of hepatitis in blood infections continued today, there would be data from the past year or two. Since Con dropped this argument entirely, he conceded it, which concedes his entire window period argument.2. See 1. Punishment:I did not drop that it was an unnecessary risk. Unnecessary implies that there are other, safer options for everyone, which simply is not the case. See below. Status Quo:I showed that it worked in Iran—an experiment. There was a shortage, a market was introduced, and now there isn’t a shortage. I don’t need to refute his other evidence because it doesn’t prove what he says it proves. Unless Con can show that the rate of increase will continue, which he failed to do, those statistics prove nothing. Deceased Donations:Here, my opponent again asserts that what he provided was “evidence. ” It is not. It would only be evidence of what he says if there were financial incentives offered for dead bodies in addition to the incentives given to living people, which wasn’t the case in Iran, the area studied. And obviously only living people want monetary incentives, which is why I suggested offering the incentives to the families of the deceased, not the dead people themselves. Con never attempted to refute this point—he just misinterpreted and ignored it, repeating his fake evidence. Shortage:1. As Con said, we only need .003% of the country to donate organs. The 6% who said they would donate with incentives would be more than enough to meet that demand. I’m sure only a minority of Iranians would be willing to donate organs for money too—but only a minority was needed, which is why they solved their kidney shortage.2. Americans are richer than Iranians? Then the price for organs would be higher. Problem solved. I make no dubious assumptions here.3. It doesn’t matter that foreigners coming here wouldn’t solve the problem. Let’s say we barred foreigners from the country, and without them, the shortage was solved. Then we let them come in, and the shortage comes back. So what? The same amount of lives are saved either way. And why wouldn’t people come here to sell organs? Millions of poor Latin American immigrants come here for work—why wouldn’t some of them also sell a kidney?4. Here, Con’s argument actually works against him. We regain blood, and it’s easy to donate, so it’s easy for people to be altruistic. It’s harder with a major surgery like a kidney donation. People are willing to be altruistic with their kidney to save a friend or family member, but very few do it for a stranger. 5. Con drops my evidence showing that the increase in donations because of presumed consent is low, when comparing all presumed consent countries to all informed consent countries. This outweighs his anecdote about a single country. There’s no reason to accept the results of a single country over the average results of presumed consent everywhere it’s been tried. Black Market:Again, I’d like to point out that Con has provided ZERO evidence that the organ shortage can be solved without a market. There are some changes that could help, sure, but absolutely nothing suggests that it can be solved. Unnecessary Risks:1. “HE ASSUMES THAT IF PEOPLE KNOW THE RISK OF (1) 35% FAILURE RATE AND (2) SIGNIFICANT DISEASE THAT THEY WILL ACCEPT THE ORGANS. ” I assume no such thing. Some people would, some wouldn’t. My point is that if they know the risks, people have the RIGHT to accept the organs, if they want.2. Again, my point about the viral RNA testing was not in the 1995 evidence—that was a completely separate point. Con ignored my argument about viral RNA testing, relying on past evidence of antibody testing (which did have a significant window period). By dropping this point, he’s conceded the entire argument about disease. Solvency:1. See Shortage: 1.2. He cites presumed consent statistics from a single country—I countered by showing that when looking at EVERY country with presumed consent, together, it hasn’t solved organ shortages or even increased donations by all that much. It’s Spain vs. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey. There are always outliers—they don’t mean anything, it’s the data set as a whole that counts.3. Con provides no evidence of this. This is only self-evidently true at the price Iranians sell their organs for. If Americans are more resistant to selling their organs, then the price would just increase. Conclusion:1. My self-ownership argument stands. People have the right to do what they want with their own bodies.2. Con conceded his entire disease argument when he dropped my point about new testing—how we can test for viral RNA now, rather than just antibodies the body produces.3. Con provides no evidence that the shortage could be solved in the status quo. He simply assumes that recent increases in donations will increase indefinitely, until the shortage is solved, without any evidence or logic to back it up. He drops the point about presumed consent by failing to respond to the evidence from ALL presumed consent countries, instead choosing to just repeat his single data point from Spain.4. Con repeatedly states that he’s provided evidence that legalizing organ markets would lead to a decrease in cadaveric donations, which is not the case. The evidence he provided only showed that if you legalize the sale of just kidneys, living donations go up while cadaveric ones go down. But since that’s not what we’re debating, it doesn’t matter. He only responds to my point about financial incentives for deceased donations by noting that “The incentive to get money is only relevant when someone is alive! ” which completely fails to respond to what I actually said, which was “allowing payment for cadavers would create a huge incentive for families to allow those cadavers to be donated. ”5. Con’s only other rebuttal to the Iran evidence was a misuse of statistics, and saying that it only worked in Iran because Iran is poorer than the U. S. There’s no reason to think markets would work in Iran but not here—the prices would just be higher. Even in a rich country like America, 6% of people said they’d be more likely to donate if there were incentives—which is more than enough.