Virginia Postrel is picking a fight with the National Kidney Foundation for saying that paying organ donors would be an “affront” to unpaid donors and that it would “cheapen the gift”, according to The New Yorker.
Taking them on, living unpaid organ donor herself Virginia Postrel says that NKF’s argument is itself an affront to her gift to her friend, Sally Satel, to whom she donated a kidney in 2006. Ultimately, Ms. Postrel’s position amounts to the idea that unpaid organ donors shouldn’t care one bit care whether organ donors are paid or not–either they give their kidneys freely to benefit those they care about, not to feel morally superior or to have someone feel obligated to them for life.
All other arguments against payments for organs aside, Postrel clearly sees nothing wrong with paying for organs–as it doesn’t cheapen HER gift to HER friend. Yet, I challenge Ms. Postrel to consider what life would be like for Ms. Satel right now had she not had so good of a friend. Ms. Satel would be one of 80,000 people in the US waiting on a list to receive a kidney, and one could only hope that she would not be one of the 4,000 who die each year while waiting on that list.
But rather than focusing on your disgust that the National Kidney Foundation will not let others sell their kidneys to strangers, Ms. Postrel, perhaps that ire could be focused upon the more practical policy options that are out there that may actually come to pass if the American public could be convinced that, for example, an opt-out system would not result in American doctors and hospitals becoming body-snatchers for human organs on a black market and a significant increase in available organs for donation. (See AJOB’s Target Article on this topic this month.)
There simply are not going to be enough living donors, like you Ms. Postrel, or even 4, 6, and 8-way organ swaps, to go around to make up for the 80,000 people waiting for kidneys. We need to find another way. Even with the system of sale for kidneys with with you are so sanguine, too few people think that the commodification of the body is okay and fear that those of lower socioeconomic status will be at risk for harm.
Given your passion for the issue, perhaps you could turn your disgust into something positive and help us bioethicists find a solution for the Sally Satel’s of the world who are literally dying for kidneys all across this country.
Summer Johnson, PhD