The U.S. federal government should permit the sale of human organs.

Thanks for accepting. "Once you insert monetary gain into the equation of organ donation, now you have a market. Once you have a market, markets are not controllable, markets are not something you can regulate, The problem with markets is that rich people would descend upon poor people to buy their organs, and the poor don't have any choice about it." –Francis Delmonico Resolved: The United States Federal Government should permit the sale of Human Organs. I negate. I offer the following observation: A government has an obligation to act in the best interest of its citizens, and if organ markets are shown to have net-negative effects either practically or ethically than the U.S. government has not only the right to, but an obligation to suppress them. Contention one: Organ Markets are unethical. A. Organ Markets lead to the commodification of Humans. When you allow people to sell their organs, you’re assigning a value to them. When you open up the doors to human commodification, it is not something you can shut. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Medical Anthropologist at Berkeley[i] Elaborates: “Markets are inclined to reduce everything—including human beings, their labor and their reproductive capacity—to the status of commodities, things that can be bought, sold, traded, and stolen. And nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the current markets for human organs and tissues to supply a medical business driven by "supply and demand. Bodily holism and integrity have given way to the divisible body and detachable organs as commodities, and as fetishized objects of desire and of consumption.” We must ask ourselves the question, where do we draw the line? Surely none of us want to live in a kind of society where humans are treated as a means to an end, and creating a market for humans causes this. Richard Demme writes[ii]: “The point is, that if everyone accepts that organs are commodities like anything else that could be bought or sold, then organs could be treated like other things of value that we barter. In such a system, it would be logical that creditors might have a say about what happens to your assets. If you list your organs along with the rest of your assets, others might have a claim on them, and that is morally repugnant.” If we allow organs to become commodities, how could it be considered unjust for a bank to demand a kidney to repay a loan? Similarly, if we legalize the organ market, how can we avoid such a consequence? Commodification is a huge impact, because it fundamentally changes not only the way we view our fellow humans, but it potentially changes the legal precedent of society. It certain causes the judiciary to have to ponder very complex ethical questions of self-autonomy and intrinsic rights. B. A market would exploit the poor. We can look to the failed Organ market in India as proof of this point. Before India banned the organ trade, the poor were being exploited. Sandhya Srinivasan reports[iii]: “..organ trafficking involves societal and global issues that must be discussed within the broader paradigm of global injustices, It must be a debate about communities of one kind of people being systematically exploited by communities of other kinds, both internationally and internationally. This is exploitation of the worst kind, where you want to remove a body part of the poor to help a rich man survive,’’ In regards to Organs sold illegally, Albert Huebner states[iv]: “… the circulation of kidneys follows the routes of traditional colonialism: from South to North, East to West, poorer to more affluent bodies, black and brown bodies to white ones, female to male, or poor, low-status men to more affluent men. Women are almost never the recipients of purchased organs.” Essentially, with an organ market what you have is the wealthy coercing the poor into selling a vital organ, which is a massive injustice and dehumanizes our underclasses. Unless we want to accept the poor as intrinsically less valuable than the wealthy, we can’t affirm. Contention two: An Organ market crowds out altruism. It’s likely that a market will not even increase the amount of organs available. Arthur Caplan writes[v]: “If this country were to allow financial incenives for organs, the money would presumably go to the family or the deceased’s designee. But if these people have their hand on the life-support plug and know they stand to make good money as soon as the owner of the valuable body parts is dead, how hard are they going to try to keep that owner alive? While offering money for organs might persuade a few more to donate, it is more likely to turn off those now willing to consider giving out of fear or knowing there’s a reward for their death.” Selling organs decreases the altruism of an actual donation. Alastair Campbell states[vi]: “It has been argued that the supply of organs will increase with an organ market, resulting in more lives saved. This is debatable, given that an organ trade may reduce altruistic donation (of both live and cadaveric organs) and will attract predominantly the poor who may provide marginal organs for transplantation.” This hypothesis is supported by UCLA Medical doctors Danovitch & Leichtman[vii]: “If kidneys could be bought, particularly if the government or an insurance entity was paying, then the temptation or even demand not to expose the potential altruistic donor to the risk that is intrinsic to the process could be overwhelming; and it is not only altruistic living kidney donation that could suffer. The approach to recently bereaved family members, an already extraordinarily difficult and profoundly sensitive task, could be made considerably more difficult by their knowledge that organs could be purchased for large sums of money and the bodies of their loved ones let undisturbed. Thus I urge a Con vote.Cites:i. Scheper-hughes, Nancy. "The Global Traffic in Human Organs", 2001.ii. Demme, Richard. "Ethical Concerns of an Organ market"iii. http://www.ipsnews.net...iv. Huebner, Albert. "Organ Snatchers" June 23rd, 2005.v. Caplan, Albert. “Cash For Kidneys? Sales Won’t Widen Donor Pool.” June 25th, 2008.vi. Campbell, Alastair V. "No such thing as ethical organ market" July 9th, 2008.vii. M. Danovitch, Gabriel & B. Leichtman, Alan. “Kidney Vending: The “Trojan Horse” of Organ Transplantaion.”