Joanna Mackay's Essay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives

Joanna Mackay’s essay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives speaks for itself. It is what the world has been going through for more than two decades up to this point. The shortage within the supply of organs, in this case, Kidneys. Kidneys are at a high demand not just domestically but internationally and that is where the problem began to get uncontrollable. In the year 2000, 2,583 Americans died while waiting for a Kidney transplant. While internationally the number sat right around 50,000 people. With the sale of organs being illegal internationally, that is what makes the demand so high. In the essay, an example was given about the demand. “When ‘desperately wanted goods’ are made illegal, history has shown that there is more opportunity for corruption …show more content…
Reading about the strenuous process that people go through in order to try and stay alive is sickening. Being put on dialysis is not life saving but is just getting the patients by. They can not do much physically because of dialysis fatigues them. Mackay wrote his essay in ways to try and persuade the reader, but they were not really convincing. In fact, I saw that the black market is not always bad. In this case, the black market is more beneficial than detrimental and is what is keeping people alive. The people in the 3rd-world who suffer tremendously from poverty, are the ones who look to the black market as a savior. They are the people who are willing to take the risk in order to inherit the money they could possibly receive. Anything having to do with the black market, without question is illegal but these patients have come to their last resort. It is a high risk-high reward situation. With nothing having to do with the surgery being documented, there is not anyone to turn to if something goes wrong. Nothing is more valuable than one’s life, so the patients are going to extreme measures in order to stay alive. I truly do not see any wrong by the patients who took measures into their own hands. A solution that was mentioned in the essay that I agree with is that it should be legal for humans to sell their organs. If one is healthy enough to donate an organ to one in need, I do not see the problem. In both cases it is helping both parties, the donor and the patient. If one is to the sell their own organs in most cases it is due to the fact they are in need of financial help, while the patient receiving the organ is going to benefit from it. My reaction to their being multiple solutions to this situation was more of a question. I wondered why if there are ways to fix a problem why not take action on it, to make it legal internationally. The black market goes way beyond this case. Other than