Governments appear reluctant in granting donors the opportunity to benefit from their organ donations, but a legalized system should be instituted to help solve the problem and contain the shortage. The demand for life-saving organs is currently on the rise, and patients and transplant teams are desperately seeking for alternatives to save a life. According to Gary and Julio (2014), “in 2012, the number of people on the waiting list for kidney transplant stood at 95,000 Americans, including men, women, and their children.” Enhanced rate of survival among patients and a constant growth of determinants for transportation render the organ transparent a desperate situation that has to be contained. The shortage situation has made patients wait for long hours as the demand for the lifesaving organs stretches beyond the supply limit. Notably, legalization of paying live organ donors has been evident in some sections of the world such as Spain ( Friedman, 2006 ). Healthy individuals require only a single kidney to survive, and that is why “34 percent of the kidneys utilized for transplants are received from live donors” (Gary & Julio, 2014). The same strategy can still be extended to the other parts of the world to contain the desperate situation in the provision of quality healthcare, specifically in the management of terminal illnesses that require the organ transplant.
A lack of the donors has made several patients contract with some organ brokers to buy kidneys at exorbitant fees from living donors so that they can save a life. Since some nations restrict or ban the sale of organ, the purchaser may be required to incur some extra cost of travelling far distances to reach the willing donor. Nonetheless, a lack of adequate studies to explore whether the donors gain in the process, a part from the financial compensation they receive, is needed in this area ( Friedman, 2006) . It can be argued that the donor brokers are the key beneficiaries of the process since they are in the business to make money by mediating between two parties, which include the patient client and the target donor. It is also a leading concern that the donors may be exposed to some health risk after donating their crucial organs, but this need to be exploited in further studies ( Friedman, 2006) . If the reward of payments made to the donors are legitimized and made ethically pertinent with the existing medical practices, then the unfortunate experience of exploitation directed to donors and their recipients can be mitigated. Hence, paying donors for organ donations should be ethically practiced and guided by the prevailing medical laws.
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Reasons for Paying for Organ Donations
Most patients who receive organ transplanting often survive. For example, the majority of patients in the United States usually receive a kidney surgery enjoy the benefit of organ donation. Nonetheless, the patient clients are not only the beneficiaries of the process but also the donors (Gary & Julio, 2014). The recipients of the organs are able to live comfortably without having to undergo the routine dialysis required of patients suffering from kidney complications. Their families stand to realize the gains of the organ donation if the recipients can go back to their regular duties and continue earning some income to fend for themselves and their families. Besides, the medical breakthrough is a way of realizing some savings because the compensation fee for securing the organ may be done once. The costs of routine dialysis are saved in the process, and thus the family members can save more money and direct to other productive activities.
Paying donors to donate organs validates the effectiveness of the transplant coordinators and hospital staff whose job depends on the volume of successful cases handled. The respective physicians and other transplant coordinators are appraised based on the levels of their performance and once the appraisers realize that the number of failed transplant cases is on the decline or more patients are surviving due to organ transplant, then the healthcare workers are rated highly in their appraisals ( Friedman, 2006) . Paying for live organ donors would encourage the physicians and transplant coordinators to work efficiently and excel in the rising numbers of assigned cases.
Paying donors to secure organs is imperative to the healthcare institutions as well as their transplant programs since they stand to gain higher volumes of cases, which promote their image and render them highly competitive in the healthcare sector. Most patient clients would want to identify with those home institutions that have successfully conducted several organ transplants (Gary & Julio, 2014). A strong brand identity of a specific healthcare facility would see it acquire more clients and benefit from more referrals because of trust and loyalty among the clients who have been served at the facility. By home institutions realizing more transplant cases and gaining the competitive edge in the healthcare market segment, paying donors to secure organs for transplant improves the image of healthcare facilities.
Purchasing organs from donors may help taxpayers enjoy specific benefits regarding tax-saving. For example, it is more expensive to secure peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis than getting treatment for a kidney transplant. The cost for the transplant support is one off does not attract much taxing cost from the taxpayers ( Friedman, 2006) . The cost of obtaining dialysis equipment is high and may attract a taxation fees in some countries, but once a successful transplant is completed, further taxation costs may be contained. Besides, most recipients could recover and continue working in their jobs and businesses to pay taxes, which would otherwise be defaulted. Hence, healthcare institutions can save on taxes paid to secure more dialysis machine for kidney support and successful recipients of organ donors will continue with their jobs to pay tax arrears not paid while they were sick, and this is possible when donors are paid for their organs.
Repeal or an amendment on sections of the law prohibiting donors from obtaining valuable consideration to compensate them for the gifts are necessary to benefit the recipients, donors, and healthcare facilities engaged in the organ management and transplant. Even though the law in the US states that “the insurance of the recipient covers the donors’ priority medical care,” donors are still required to incur the cost of transportation to reach the site where the planned transplant is destined to occur ( Friedman, 2006) . The law is negatively skewed to the disadvantage of the donor since he or she does not receive the compensation for transport cost incurred, lost time or lost wages. The lack of compensation has deterred most people from donating organs to facilitate the transplantation programs. The solution to this problem would be the implementation of pilot grants to help in recouping these costs, but the signed pilot grants remain underfunded ( Friedman, 2006) . Hence, the Organ Donation and Recovery Improvement Act (2004) needs to be revised so that the willing organ donors can be compensated for the costs incurred in the process of reaching out to the recipients at the designated locations for conducting the transplants.
Paying donors for their organs will encourage individuals who want to venture into this trade for monetary gains. In the U.S., payments made for donating other bodily materials, such as the sale of regenerative items like semen, blood, and hair that have less risk posed to the donor are legalized. The products are allowed to trade for financial gain, specifically by the individuals deemed economically disadvantaged. Nevertheless, ethical and legal aftermaths of misleading purchasers about the risks of illness transmission, specifically in sperm and blood, complicate the process. With less legal restrictions, paying for organ donations will encourage more people who want to gain financially to join the business.
Paying people to donate organs is a way of incentivizing them to participate in the exercise. Unethically, paying respondents to participate in research studies contravenes the professional standards of a reliable research since the payments that the participants receive may make them compromise the quality of data collected. According to the National Kidney Foundation (n.d), “the implementation of financial incentive to enhance organ donation is not desirable…it is likely to compromise morals, ethics, and social fabric of the nation.” On a different line of thought, it is probably not possible to obtain adequate respondents to volunteer in the exercise if they are not paid. Open solicitations are often advertised in busy and public places, but regulatory agencies concerned with the supervision of human assessment often codon them so that the investigations adhere to the ethical standards and concerns. The same way newspaper may carry adverts for soliciting egg donors, the same should extend to other body organs such as the kidney. By soliciting organ donors, payments act as incentives of encouraging them to volunteer and donate.
Paying donors for organ donation is desirable and has to be ethically exercised within the prevailing medical laws. Legal acts that discourage the practice should be repealed or amended to pave the way for organ donation. In this regard, individuals who are willing to donate their organs should be compensated financially to cater for the transportation, lost wages, and lost time to reach the recipients at the designated places for conducting transplants. Payments will incentivize more people to donate, and hence the facility will gain regarding the numbers of cases of organ transplant completed. Notably, physicians and transplant coordinators are appraised on performance based on efficiency and the numbers of successful cases handled. In the long-run, paying for organ donations will save on costs and taxation. Hence, paying for donors for their organs is a desirable initiative that should be strengthened, but caution has to be exercised to conduct it ethically within the confines of the prevailing medical laws.
References
Friedman, A. L. (2006). Payment for living organ donation should be legalised. BMJ : British Medical Journal , 333 (7571), 746–748. http://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38961.475718.68
Gary, S.B. & Julio, J. E. (2014). Cash for Kidneys: The Case for a Market for Organs . Retrieved from file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user/My%20Documents/Downloads/kidneys%20(1).pdf
National Kidney Foundation (n.d.). Financial Incentives for Organ Donation . Retrieved from https://www.kidney.org/news/newsroom/positionpaper03
