Across the world today people are selling their bodily organs to organ
trafficking syndicates in order to make money for necessities and to pay off
loans used in order to survive. Modern medical technology has vastly
improved the outcome of organ transplants and survival rates of human
organ recipients. This in turn means that as a survival option many more
potential recipients are being placed on waiting lists in order to receive
organ transplants.
What therefore contributes to the organised crime of black markets in human
organs is the great shortages in the numbers of donated organ necessary for
organ transplantations. This is due to increased numbers of patients on
transplant waiting lists. Poor donors are therefore willing, in the nonregulated
system of organ trade, to sell their organs to increase their fortunes
and rich ill recipients are willing to pay any price for any organ. Organised
crime legislation and medical policies today make this activity illegal and
this can be said to be half the problem in increased organ markets and organ
trafficking syndicates.
The traditional system of organ donation, namely altruistic organ donation
without compensation, is no longer effective enough in ensuring that
sufficient numbers of human organs are donated yearly to meet the demand.
Hospitals and other non-governmental organisations or institutions dealing with organ donation, procurement and human organ transplantation are in
desperate need of such organs for organ transplants.
For this reason various solutions have been illustrated as methods in
eliminating the organised crime of organ trafficking and increasing available
organs needed for transplantation. Some of these options include national
organ donor registries to track current organ donors, presumed consent laws
which require donors to specifically opt out of an organ donor registry,
conscription or state owned organs as well as futureâs markets or donation
contracts and other forms of compensation to donors such as tax deductions,
preference for future organ transplants above other recipients and
remuneration for all expenses incurred and lost during the organ donation
period.
Educational and public media programmes have also been suggested to
educate average citizens on the issue of organ transplantation and to make
them aware of organ trafficking and the need for donated organs, whether
such human organs are donated while the donor is alive or if the donor only
consent to such removal of organs once deceased.
Many ethical dilemmas exist regarding these various ideas to increase
donated organs. People feel that by selling human organs for example, poor
donors will be exploited and altruistic donations will no longer be willing to
donate their organs because of feelings of disgust for newly designed organ
donation legislation.Beyond this fear lies the fear that if organ markets were legalised only richer
members of society would be able to afford organ transplantations and that
thereby poorer people would not have access to organ transplants. The
situation without such a legalised market in place, however, already exploits
the poor members of society and bad health risks for both the organ donor
and organ recipient ensue due to shocking medical surroundings and
incorrect procedures used in illegal organ transplantations.
What is recommended therefore is that such legalised systems of
compensated organ donation are to work in conjunction with the traditional
altruistic system of organ donation and other methods used to increase organ
donation and that legislation be correctly drafted and implemented to benefit
both organ donor and organ recipient.
It is deemed that such a legalised system of organ sales will eventually
eliminate the organised crime of organ trafficking as the illegal demand for
such organs will no longer exist. This will occur because of increased organ
donations due to, amongst other methods of organ procurement, educational
programmes and organ donors receiving some form of compensation for
their donation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-06142007-072827 |
| Date | 14 June 2007 |
| Creators | Watson, Calinka |
| Contributors | Prof H Oosthuizen |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-06142007-072827/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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