Why Is It Ethical To Pay People To Donate Their Organs

According the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, almost 78,000 people are currently waiting for an organ donor, in the U.S. alone. Last year, only a mere amount of 2,553 organ transplant operations were performed, making the chance of someone on the list receiving an organ around 30%. In the prospective future, the amount of organ donors is not expected to rise at a significant rate; however, the rate of those on the waiting list is expected to grow, further reducing the chance of any individual placed on the organ waiting list to receive an organ. This enormous gap between the demand for organs and supply needed to meet the demand brings up the question: Is it ethical to pay people to “donate” their organs? In the case of kidneys and parts of the liver, it is ethical to incentivize …show more content…
Castro explains how the current gap between the demand and supply of organs is only predicted to grow in the future and alternatives to organ donations need to be implemented. Alex Berger says that “thousands of people die waiting [for a kidney] each year,” further illustrating the need for a new method of procuring organs for those on the waitlist. Both Castro and Berger believe that compensation for organ donation will greatly increase the supply of available organs to be transplanted, reducing the wait time on the organ transplant list, and saving thousands of lives that are lost while waiting for an organ. This makes compensation for organ donations the ethical choice because a huge, predicted, shortage of available organs is going to arrive, causing many unnecessary deaths, and there is no current alternative as effective as increasing the amount of available organs as