Cause And Effect Essay On Trade Or Donation Of Human Organs

Introduction

Trade or donation of human organs has been a widely discussed topic since Dr. C. Bernard performed the first heart transplant in the world in Cape Town, South Africa. Organ trade means the sale and purchase of the human body, tissues or organs for the purpose of transplantation (Kishore, 2005). The world is facing an excess demand problem due to a lower supply of healthy body parts. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) report 2019, the US waiting list for organ transplants exceeds more than 100,000 people as of March 2019. Heart and liver transplants average waiting time in the country was 148 days from 2003 to 2014. This median waiting time for organ donation significantly varies with the status of patients. The report further points out that the organs available for transplantation shortage leads to illegal trading around the world except for Iran. When a body part is removed for the purpose of commercial transactions is termed illegal organ trade. These illegal trade trends are positively increasing due to high demands and/or high average waiting time for transplantation (Pattinson, 2008).

Discussion

There is a famous saying of the illegal market that “desperate people contact the prohibited markets for a donation of organs”. The most frequently transplanted organ in the world is the kidney because kidney failure is recognized as a leading cause of people (Cherry, 2015). According to a survey, 8000 donors are dying every year while 75000 people approximately registered on the waiting lists, so each dying donor provides almost 3.5 body parts on average in the US. The conditions are even more severe in other countries, especially in the Asian region. Another study conducted by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a nonprofit organization, stated that 15 people on US waiting lists die per day on average who could have saved their lives if they got organs on time. Statistics further described that six thousand organs, on average, are provided by living donors, meaning that more than five thousand individuals from the kidney transplant waiting lists die per year.

Day by day rising demand for organ donation is a very complex challenge, not only because of the clinical demands of transplantation, allocation, and recovery but also because of the emotional side of the decision that is faced by the families of individuals. Significant and growing trends in kidney transplants are causing a bigger organ-waiting population. The reasons for increasing kidney failures include poor eating habits, obesity, Type II Diabetes, and progressively poor health conditions. Hence, these reasons lead to kidney failures of individuals, which increases kidney demand and ultimately provokes the illegal organ transplant trade. Another strand of literature further points out that the rising fast food markets, reduction of physical stimulation and drug addiction for depression or kidney failure are other contributing factors to nasty eating behaviours, which consequently add more people to the long organ waiting lists (Cherry, 2015).

Obesity is a complex disorder and is documented as a preventable cause of death around the world. The majority of obese patients in global families are falling into end-stage renal disease. There is a plethora of research available claiming that end-stage renal disease patient has a survival disadvantage on dialysis as compared to transplantation. However, the greater part of obese patients have plenty of other associated health problems which restrict them from enrolling on the organ transplant waiting lists. Medical research also revealed that when it comes to kidney transplants, diabetes and obesity patients put themselves at a higher risk of undesirable consequences, for example, urine protein and acute rejection, graft failure and delayed function of the graft. A major risk connected with the obese patient is graft failure, which is also verified by the Cox regression modelling hazard ratios. A key observation from the medical literature is that normal-weight individuals have lower risks of adverse consequences attached to kidney transplantation as compared to pre-obese overweight individuals (Satz, 2008).

End-stage renal disease patient population demanding dialysis treatment is rapidly growing, but, on the other hand, kidney donors availability is rapidly declining. This complex situation boosts the average waiting time for the lifeless donor transplant. As mentioned earlier, due to the worldwide shortage of donated organs a large number of people dying on a daily basis from the waiting lists. There are plenty of initiatives taken the governments around the world to increase the donor pool, but no significant outcomes have come into being from these measures because the donors and patient family still have the right to make final decisions about transplantation (Pattinson, 2008).

Although trading, sale or donation of human organs is illegal in the majority of countries and recognized as disreputable by the major health organizations, the willful sale of human organs is significantly increasing due to the lack of donor availability and the increase in demand. On the other hand, plenty of countries, including the United States, are now legalizing kidney sales for those who have the capability to do so. The reason behind these initiatives is to upsurge the donor pool despite the fact that there are high life-threatening risks attached to these immoral practices. The kidney pool of donors can also progress if trading of this body organ is made legal at a rational price to the donors. Another strand of studies also suggests that there should be government agencies to help the system with appropriate marketing, management, and supervision approaches. It would be a sustainable and financially strong structure because expenditures of payments to donors would balance out the cost reduction of dialysis (Ma et al., 2016).

Plenty of empirical studies claim that there is a strong and positive correlation between the black market and the waiting list. To keep the discussion simple, the rise in organ transplant waiting lists leads to a rise in the black market of organ trade. The justification behind these empirical propositions is simple: people become desperate and look for organ donors on the black market due to increasing trends of transplant waiting lists because waiting for a couple of years to get a transplantation of an organ can cause early death. As brought up earlier, the black market works in violation of government codes of practice where unlawful trade of human organs takes place because everything is illegal in these black markets, so the government has no authority or hold to control them.

Organ trading black market is familiar as the most controversial and immoral sales market, which has been booming during the last couple of decades. Because of the sensitivity of organ donation, the system can become irrepressible and destructive if it is dominated by dishonest brokers and doctors. Another important thing to mention here about the black market is that the victims of wrong transplantation cannot argue with the state because they know that the procedure is prohibited by the government. Therefore, in order to ensure the meagerness of the black market, human organ stealing must be controlled and structured by different institutions and local governments (Satz, 2015).

History has proven that organ trafficking is a global crisis, it would disgrace the state if exposed to how often these black markets are being practiced in a particular country (Kishore, 2005). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the trade or sale of human body parts is a discriminating deed because one party is getting an advantage during the process of being financially strong while another party is selling body parts due to his vulnerabilities and being less fortunate. Global Financial Integrity research states that illegal organ trade is significantly increasing in almost every country, including developing and developed. Plenty of organ trafficking assertions are thought-provoking and difficult to prove due to the unavailability of reliable data and the absence of proof. Many cases related to the human organ black markets have been filed and prosecuted in different countries, but no serious results have been found (Pattinson, 2008).

Conclusion

In this research essay, we comprehensively examine the sale, trade or donation of human organs around the world. We shed light on the black markets of human organ trafficking and attached higher risk of undesirable consequences. After a keen evaluation of the bulk of medical studies, we conclude that the rise in organ transplant waiting lists leads to rising in the black market of organ trade. Likewise, illegal trade trends are positively increasing due to high demands and/or high average waiting time for transplantation. In sum, key causes of the trading boom in black markets include depressing and costly procedures, higher demands and lengthy process of big waiting lists. There are plenty of factors which define the length of transplantation waiting time period, and matching compatibility of the organs is one of the most important among them.

References

Cherry, M. J. (2015). Kidney for sale by owner: human organs, transplantation, and the market. Georgetown University Press.

Kishore, R. R. (2005). Human organs, scarcities, and sale: morality revisited. Journal of Medical Ethics, 31(6), 362-365.

Pattinson, S. D. (2008). Organ trading, tourism, and trafficking within Europe. Med. & L., 27, 191.

Satz, D. (2008, October). XIV—the moral limits of markets: The case of human kidneys. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Vol. 108, No. 1_pt_3, pp. 269-288). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Satz, D. (2015). Ethical Issues in the Supply and Demand of Human Kidneys. Bioethics: An Anthology, 425.

Wu, Y., Yang, T., Li, L., & Ma, W. (2016, July). Ethical issues relating to living organ donation in China. In Transplantation Proceedings (Vol. 48, No. 6, pp. 1875-1878). Elsevier.