Kidneys For Sale Miriam Shulman Summary

If there was a statistic that backed up organ legalization as far as how many lives would be saved per year, would it be immoral for a person to be in approval of legalization? Miriam Schulman, the director of Markkula for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, who wrote Kidneys for Sale: A Reconsideration, believes it goes far beyond saving lives. Anthony Gregory, a research fellow and student programs director at the Independent Institute, and the author of Why Legalizing Organ Sales Would Help Save Lives, End Violence, has similar beliefs as Schulman. Both authors explain how legalizing does not only benefit the rich, but can also benefit the poor as well in other ways; what the need is to what is actually available, such as how many kidneys are available to how many are actually donated; and explains what the people who …show more content…
He states, “There are only about 20,000 kidneys every year for approximately 80,000 patients on the waiting list” (451). That is a big difference; could legalizing organ sales contribute to saving lives? Is it still considered decent to donate an organ for money? Schulman seems to agree with Gregory, including the stats of Margret Mclean the director of bioethics at the Markkila Center for applied ethics, in her excerpt; stating, “About 17 people die every day while waiting for a suitable organ…” (446). She also includes details about the black market, how a 17 year old sold his kidney in the black market for an iPhone; which is now suffering from renal insufficiency due to a bad procedure(447). Both authors have similar mindsets with difference views and examples, but it is safe to say they are for legalizing organ sales. Both see the need for legalization due to the fact that people die every day from waiting for organs, because they either are not affiliated with the black market, or cannot afford the black market