By Dylan Matthews
ABC News has an interesting piece on how an increasing number of those on kidney transplant wait lists are resorting to seeking out donors on Craiglist. For those who get them, it's great; it's faster than traditional methods, obviously, but more easier than finding paid donors has been in the past. But there are hiccups. Most hospitals won't perform the surgeries. A lot of the proposals are not serious, and there's no way to ferret out legitimate candidates. And because federal law prohibits organ sales, there's no legal recourse for those who get scammed.
I've never had a moral objection to organ sales, though I'm nowhere near as passionate about overturning the ban as, say, the gang at Reason. But this strikes me as an area where the morality of the individual act is pretty much irrelevant after a while. As long as rising obesity and diabetes rates drive up the incidence of kidney disease, and as long as the Internet makes it easier and easier to connect donors and recipients, there's going to be an increasing black market for organs. And as long as that market is operating underground, it will be impossible to regulate in a way that prevents fraud and ensures adequate medical care. At some point, we're going to have to decide whether the principle of equity in transplants is worth the risks inherent in an unregulated organ market. Considering as those risks could include death, should organ traders start resorting to back-alley transplants when hospitals won't do the procedure, I think that's a fairly easy call.
