Saturday, July 14, 2007

Should Organ Donors Be Paid?

A great University of Chicago Magazine article asks this very question. I tend to be pretty attached to the con side, based especially on the "commodification of the body" principle (in the abstract) and the prediction that poor donors would not pursue or receive adequate medical care after donating/selling (in the concrete). The pro argument seems to me to be based on a radical utilitarianism that says that some life is always better than no life, so 6500 exploited poor people with missing organs are better than having 6500 people die per year due to inadequate organ donation. Instead I posit that for a Christian, the integrity of the body is a value equal to life, and so it is better to die than to farm human beings for their organs. What do you think?

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