Should people be allowed to sell their organs? Currently, exchanging organs for money or other "valuable considerations" is illegal, but some members of the medical and business communities would like to change that. There are two primary arguments normally offered for this. a person's organs belong to them (so they should be able to do with them as they wish) and the shortage of available organs means we need radical solutions in order to make more organs available and save more lives.
A number of arguments against selling organs get bandied about, but there are two which lie behind most of the others and which address both of the above arguments. The first concerns how selling organs leads to the commodification of human bodies and the second conerns the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the rich. These are difficult arguments to explain and are not convincing to everyone, but they cut to the heart of what we want our society ultimately to be like.
Commodification & Ownership: It is not clear that just because the only possible "owner" of an organ is the person in whose body it exists that, therefore, this same person should also be able to sell it to the highest bidder. You own your body as a whole as well, but does that mean you can sell yourself into slavery? Of course not — human beings cannot be made into commodities like that. There are even restrictions on how a person can sell their labor, such as laws concerning minimum wages.
A commodity is something that "can be turned to commercial or other advantage." A person certainly uses their body for themselves and their benefit, but they cannot turn that body over to others for their own permanent use and benefit. Restrictions on the ability to transfer ownership and control are not only common, but in fact inherent in how ownership is defined.
In modern society, the "ownership" a person exercises over their body is treated as unique in that it cannot be legally transferred to any other party. Merely observing that you "own" something does not also confer the right to transfer ownership and control to anyone else and in any manner you wish.
An important social reason why the ability to transfer "ownership" of one's own body is so restricted is because of how it is exploitable against the poor by the rich. Rich people have not sold themselves into slavery, the poor have. Rich people are not protected by minimum wage laws, the poor are. Rich people are not protected by laws against selling organs, the poor are. In each case, it is the rich who would most benefit by moving laws into the opposite direction, not the poor.
If one’s organs become simply another commodity that can be bought and sold, like cars or furniture, and are part of an estate, like houses or stock, doesn’t that mean they should be consistently treated as such? If a person goes into bankruptcy, would the value of their organs be considered in the final value of their estate? If a person dies and property has to be sold in order to pay off debts, might the person’s relatives be forced into selling the organs?
Even those who favor some system of selling and buying organs will normally balk at such prospects and would favor regulations that would prevent just such things from happening. Once that happens, however, it is an admission that organs are not “just like any other property” and should not be treated as such. If such an admission is made, though, the case for allowing the purchase and sale of organs in the first place is weakened.
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