Kidney sale proposal sparks medical ethics debate

[muriel_volestrangler]

People should be allowed to sell their kidneys for £28,000 to tackle a shortage of donors, a researcher has suggested.

Sue Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at the University of Dundee, said it was time to pilot "paid provision" of live kidneys in the UK, under "strict rules of access and equity".

She said letting people sell theirs could help them pay off university loans or simply give them the chance to do a kind deed. The rate of donation of kidneys from the dead and living had not kept pace with the need for the organs and has plateaued at about 2,000 a year in the UK.

In a Personal View article published on the British Medical Journal website, she suggested a move towards regulated paid provision for live donors' kidneys, with the organs allocated in the same "fair" way as they are now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/03/kidney-sale-proposal-medical-ethics

Profile of Roff:

SUE Rabbitt Roff is a social scientist who has spent a career spanning four decades studying subjects including teenage parenting, the health of nuclear-test veterans and human rights.

Over the course of her career, she has had more than 70 papers published and for the past 20 years she has been based at Dundee University in the Centre for Medical Education. At Dundee, she has carried out research into the health of nuclear-test veterans, discovering documentary evidence that troops had been ordered to run, walk and crawl through contaminated areas in the days following detonations in Australia, and presenting her findings to the Scottish Government. That led to her interest in the issue of informed consent in human experimentation, particularly in relation to living and deceased organ donation.

http://heritage.scotsman.com/scotland/Profile-Sue-Rabbit-Roff.6811976.jp

I'm not convinced at all. Once you start pointing out "you could sell a kidney to pay off your loan", people will be saying that they ought to.

[non sociopath skin]

1. I agree, Mu.

Thin end of the wedge, especially in the present political climate.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

2. Yikes. I can just imagine life in a few years' time if current trends continue...

"I'm really disappointed that so few of my best pupils are applying to university."

"Well, you can't blame them; nowadays they get charged 50,000 a year *and* one of their kidneys."


Or:

"Yes, I know you've been waiting three years for that operation. I'm sure we could get it done promptly if you'd agree to let us remove a kidney as well."

[oldironside]

3. I can't believe anyone would even suggest that.

What they are effectively saying is, if you want a university education, give us a pound of flesh. Have we really come to this? Even in Elizabethan England, where the majority of the population watched short drop hangings as a form of entertainment, they thought this sort of thing was horrifying.

[dipsydoodle]

4. What an awful thought.

:(

An odd side issue of this could be that those who freely their donate organs after death could instead pre-arrange to sell them instead with proceeds going to their estate.

Off topic - if you ever cook kidneys in a microwave make sure they're cut up small to help avoid extremely messy detonations.

[oldironside]

5. ...

:puke:

[Nihil]

6. Well, you managed to counter my angry "WTF?" with a "Tell me you didn't ...?"

My blood pressure hit the roof when I read this in the OP ...

>> She said letting people sell theirs could help them pay off university loans

... but, fortunately, reading to the end of the thread before replying not only
calmed me down but made me snort ...

> Off topic - if you ever cook kidneys in a microwave make sure they're cut up
> small to help avoid extremely messy detonations.

:spray:

:toast:

[dipsydoodle]

7. I learned the hard way

Was a bit like my wife putting chestnuts under the grill without crisscrossing them with a knife first.

Another handy tip - If you've got a combined microwave/normal oven make sure which function you're using when you intend to oven cook spring rolls for 10 minutes or so. Using the microwave by mistake converts them to sticks of charcoal and blows the magnetron. :(

:hi: