Living Organ Donors Should Be Allowed to be Compensated

To answer the question I apparently missed earlier, I agree that altruistic live donors would be the best option, but in terms of practicality, that has failed. Every nation dependent on altruistic donors winds up with a waiting list that gets longer with each passing year. Iran is the only nation with no waiting list for organs that can be donated live, and is the only nation that allows live donors to be compensated. In terms of whether live donors offer benefit over cadaver organ donors, I believe I did thoroughly address that with references. Cadaver-originating organs tend to be less successful and need to be re-replaced much sooner than organs from living donors, due it is believed to better screening and less time from organ-death to transplant (since a live donor's organ would be still living inside of the donor when the donor is brought to the hospital, and would need minimal time to be physically moved to the recipient when the recipient is ready, so it is 'fresher' with less decay). There is also more haste due to needing to minimize the death-time of the organ, no time to double-check things whereas much more time can be afforded to ensure everything is proper with a living donor. The current shortage is causing deaths and increasing wait times for recipients; supply is not keeping up with demand. The worse this gets, the higher the rates of death. I am sure that any fair-minded reader would accept that allowing donor compensations would be a far less evil than the deaths of recipients-in-need. In terms of practicality, there is no better alternative. Allowing live organ donors to be compensated has been proven, in Iran, to eliminating wait times for recipients, similarly eliminating the death rate among recipients-in-waiting. No other system has proven up to the task of eliminating the waiting lists nor wait-deaths, which is the meter I use for practicality. Regarding the points on live vs. cadaver organs, check my sources and you will find startling differences, such as a live organ transplant showing to have twice the organ-life of a cadaver transplant; in other words, an organ received from a cadaver will only have half the life, on average, as an organ from a live donor before it needs to be replaced. And your own numbers, while impressive showing, actually do show a stark difference: 97.9% surival rate means 2.1% death rate, or 1 in 47; a 94.5% survival rate means a 5.5% death rate, or 1 in 18. I wouldn't call that an insignificant difference; live organ donation is twice that, from your source, as cadaver organ donation . .. combine this with the fact that many needing organs will die on the waiting list, and it adds even more to the practicality of allowing live donors to be compensated. In terms of exploiting the poor, consider that it is a special rule to apply this to organ donation when the poor are far more likely to put their health and lives at serious risk for a little money in taking risky, relatively low-paying jobs such as that of soldiers, police and firefighters, high rise construction workers, etc. Does that mean we should eliminate paychecks for these occupations to eliminate the exploitation of the poor for these dangerous occupations? Also, in Iran, it is important to note that $1,200 goes much farther than it does, say, in the U. S. In terms of failure to provide long-term care, that applies to uncompensated live donation as well -- no long-term care is provided for them, they must come up with the money to pay for that themselves in the U. S. I believe in not only compensating live donors with cash, but I also propose lifelong free medical and mental health care to deal with all side effects; currently, as I understand it, this too would be considered compensating a donor and is illegal! The negative effects on employment are an obvious reason -to- allow donors to be compensated. Iran's suitability for social justice may not be ideal, but bear in mind Iran's regime is totalitarian. A better system could be worked out, but clearly Iran has at least eliminated the deaths on the recipient's side from waiting and from having live donations, the recipients are also more likely to survive well after the procedure. Currently, the only ones who are suitable candidates to donate in the U. S. are those who are healthy, lucky enough to have health insurance to help them with the long-term side effects (the procedure itself and short-term care for the donor are handled by the recipient's health care plan), are wealthy enough to absorb the airfare, lodging and other costs of actually getting to where their organ is needed, and money to help them through loss of work and employment. Poor people have no choice -- they /cannot/ donate even if they want because the cost is too high! My opponent's dismissal that my solution would eliminate waiting lists is false, and my opponent cannot point to any other system except Iran's that has eliminated the waiting list death tolls. Further, my opponent did not properly interpret his own data on the survivability benefits of live versus cadaver donation, resulting in his erroneous evaluation of a 1 in 18 chance of death in the first year from a cadaver donation to 1 in 47 chance of death for a live donation as not being significantly different, and he also ignores that a zero-waiting list means no deaths while waiting, meaning a lot of patients never even start their first year to be counted as among the 1 in 18! I agree that altruistic donation is the most honorable, and do not like the fact that the poor are exploited in so many ways, putting their lives at risk just to feed their families . .. but I see little difference in that between donating a live organ and enlisting in the military or putting their lives on the line in other dangerous, relatively low-paying operations. What's worse, allowing exploitation of the poor, or taking away money incentives that exploit the poor from all dangerous choices such as the life-risking professions?