Living Organ Donors Should Be Allowed to be Compensated

I thank my opponent for continuing to respond, but despite asserting that he had conceded the point that live organ donations are superior to those from cadavers, he continues to insist the difference is minor, though I pointed out from his own statistics that a recipient has more than double the survival rate from receiving a live organ than one from a body, and that means extra deaths result if the only focus for organ donations are post-death donations. While dead organs are better than none, live are even better. Further, while it seems logical that everyone will die and thus there should be virtually unlimited organs from dead bodies, only paid compensation for live donations has been proven to be up to the task of eliminating organ donation waiting lists. That means its the most practical means. My opponent has also ignored my points that compensating the poor for donating organs is no different than compensating the poor for taking deadly-dangerous occupations such as that of a soldier, police officer or highway worker. By and large, people from wealthy families do not put their lives at risk for others carrying out essential duties to protect others. A compensation system could operate in different ways ... instead of a lump-sum, for instance, donors could be given a special allowance for life, say $200/week. As it stands, anyone who donates an organ is incurring not only the brave sacrifice of a piece of their bodies, but they incur extra costs and expenses for life that current law prohibits compensation for. Comparing the need of the impoverished for money to a gambler's addiction is utterly ridiculous; the poor do not suffer because they over-indulged in income! Having no money ails their health in the United States and causes emotional and mental strife to boot. What if donating an organ could allow a degree of independence to the donor as well as giving life to a recipient? That's win-win in my book. If a person is allowed to have a lucky break in life because their daddy was rich and they inherited that wealth, why not allow anyone willing to give up a piece of themselves to save another's life a reward of not having to worry quite so hard about where their next meal, rent check or HMO premium comes from? I can find no logic nor reasoning at all to the notion that giving a poor person an opportunity to have a better life while at the same time helping an ill person to have a new chance at life is so evil that it is worth letting the sick just die. To me, there is no worse a moral or ethical abomination than standing in the way of saving lives. If there is a less evil option that will get the job done, then let's do it. A poor person should have the right to choose to sell a bit of themselves to help themselves as well as a person whose life is in danger. There are a lot more people struggling with bills than those who never have to worry about them, so making the choice to donate hard or even impossible for them because they would be expected to absorb extra financial burdens associated with donating their organs by themselves keeps the supply of organs needlessly low, and by extension leads to unnecessary deaths. Is allowing a poor person to get by through life a little easier really such a terrible evil that its worth letting someone in need die on a waiting list or from a dead donor's organ when a live donor would have more than doubled their chance for survival? Live donors save lives, but the personal financial costs of uncompensated donation make a lot of people who might otherwise save a life through live donor donation instead decide against it. Deaths from waiting lists and below-half survival rates from cadaver-originated organs are unnecessary and a much worse evil than the win-win situation of allowing a poor person to receive monetary assistance to help them get through life in exchange for giving up a part of their bodies that someone else has greater need of.