Recent reports on conviction of 2 Indonesians in Singapore for organ trading got Singaporeans talking, reflecting sharply differing views on whether organ trading should be legalised or regulated.
Letters from those who fear the abuse, those who see it as disregarding human dignity, and letters from those who had personally or who had family members receiving an extended lease of life from the transplants, and letters from those describing the life on the brink.
I had much thoughts, and this entry is a just a brief summary of my take on some of the issues.
Start at the beginning - the patient.
How did the patient end up in such a state?
Very rarely were people born with malfunctioning organs.
Another possible cause, as in the case of Andre De'Cruz, was having organ failure after taking unsafe supplements.
Or from accidents.
Generally, it resulted from the patient's lifestyle, either informed, wilful or actual ignorance. Generally, each individual has a responsibility over his/her own health.
It might be a case of "closing the barn door after the horse escaped", but it is relevant in understanding that generally, patients need kidney transplants due to their own failure to care for their own bodies, for one reason or another.
This is something to bear in mind for parties demanding organ trading to be legalised, as if it is a right to make a bid for the organ of another human being.
Now let's look at the supplier, not the donor but the seller.
Why do sellers offer to sell their organs? For money of course.
But is their purpose for getting the money relevant?
Poverty - well, poverty is their condition, but it does not indicate whether the money from the trade, which is theirs by all legal rights, will be put to good use to make a long-term difference.
Money do run out. S$30,000 or even US$30,000 may seem like a lot of Indonesian rupiahs, but it won't mean a lifetime of leisure for the family.
There's many real life anecdotes of "easy come, easy go". If the government do allow people to sell organs because of pressing needs (not for shopping from LVMH), it also must look into ensuring the sellers gain in the long-term, or they will soon be considering selling another organ or getting another family member to take his/her turn to be the seller.
Having looked at buyer, seller, there's the middle-men. In many illegal trades, or even legal trades when it was allowed in India until 1994, middle-men not only ate up the lion's share of the price, there were reports of outright abuses, such as tricking men into unknowingly having their organs removed. It is not beyond impossibility to get people into debts to force them to sell their organs.
I do not think I am on a moral high horse to expect that every means must be used to protect the organ suppliers from being abused, exploited or forced into the trade.
In an ideal world, there is enough transplants coming only from donors.
But in an ideal world, there would be very much lower demand for transplants as people take better care of their own health.
Good points for thought. Perhaps in a few decades (maybe more) all this will be mute when we can either grow new organs from your own stem cells (or others') or from pigs or other near compatible mammals.
ReplyDeleteBut would humans appreciate their bodies less when replacements are easily available?
ReplyDeleteGot nothing against science progressing, but I always look back at the basics.
Oh, if you read enough science fiction or you are a modern anthropologist you will realise how we perceive ourselves, society and the world has already begun to be influenced by science and technology. The change in perspective may in fact be accelerating.
ReplyDeleteOne day, sex changes may be as trivial as dyeing your hair. People will look at life differently if death by old age no longer happens. Decide you want a boy for child #3, grow to at least 1.8m tall, have 20/20 vision, IQ of at least 140 etc, no problem, fill up that e-form and send it to your doctor. The list goes on...
Not for me that Brave New World.
ReplyDeleteSex change? How about changing skin, hair, eye and other features from a Far East Asian to a Nordic blond blue-eyed?
If imagination can lead to technology to change one's gender, why not one's racial appearance?
But I really doubt if any scientist would make such a politically-incorrect suggestion today because the hype (or enlightenment) is "whatever race you're born with is cool" and it is extremely prejudicial to suggest providing a way to chance one's racial appearance.
But ... if a person can say "I was born a man but I feel I'm a woman.", why can't another say "I was born black but inside is a white man trying to get out."?
Anyway, back to organ trading.
I never quite buy the morality bit and I thought it was a rather one-sided unilateral PoV, but after reading some posts, I understand a bit more of where it's coming from.
By drawing analogies to impoverished females who were sold or who sold themselves to be brides, one can understand why the buying should be discouraged even though we can empathise with the poverty of the sellers.
But distasteful as it is, a seller should not be condemned, and in that light, the trade should not be banned. The best one can do is regulate and protect the innocent.
The only way to stop the sellers is to alleviate the pressure on them to sell their organs, rather than criminalise it on moral grounds.
If a woman sees little alternative besides prostituting herself to feed the family, those who cannot help should get out of the way instead of hindering.
Ahah, you got strange comparisons ! :p
ReplyDeleteA little trivia for you SF fans out there, A Brave New World contains (AFAIK) the first printed reference to Singapore in Science Fiction. ;-D
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have to be made by a scientist (or technologist as the case may be) once a science or technology becomes available, depend on the ingenuity of the masses to bring it in directions not foreseen by the inventors.
ReplyDeleteAs for being born black and just a white man trying to get out, do you know who is Michael Jackson? Aging singer with a strange skin condition? (Joke)
Boy, wouldn't Bananas everywhere just love it when this becomes possible. ("Presenting the new genetically modified Banana, look, the skin is as white as the inside!") Reminds me of that really really bad James Bond movie with Halle Barry.
Back to organ transplant, for those expecting or plan on being so see if you can harvest the umbilical cord and store it for potential future goodness.
Post-humanity, here we come, an inch at a time.
I dont think we will live long enough to witness the advancements.
ReplyDeleteFirst, regarding the buyer - yes, sometimes people don't take care of their bodies, and yes, they fall ill, however, there will always be circumstances leading them to the situation - some may never heard of the need for exercise, some might not have the time to do it, some just don't have the means to care for their bodies - just because they have not taken good care of the body they were given, does not make them bad, just sad.
ReplyDeleteSecond, for the seller, Snowy, you have perhaps hit the nail... how many people would be willing to give up something that were theirs, but because of circumstances, sell it for money. Poverty, as you have indicated might have been the reason. Not everyone is level-headed and plans for the future, or even for the present... they are desperate people - some people chose to remove something from their bodies to meet their critical situation e.g. from the threats of loan sharks? They are not only sad, but wretched.
Third, for the middlemen, sadly there will always be people who would profit from someone's pain... they are like the drug traffickers who preys upon the vulnerable ones... perhaps someday, they might even have a law to hang those who traffics on human organs??? They are not just sad, wretched, but repugnant.
And I heard of factory workers who intentionally cause injuries to themselves on the pretext of accidents so as to claim insurance.
ReplyDelete