Hey! I would first of all like to announce that my capabilities in English are very limited, I am French. I wrote here before and i found the responses that i got very interesting. Since then, I have read som random articles about health care and money and stuff on this site. I have also read a book in economics, in french, written by a guy named Frederic Bastiat (the title is “That wich is seen and that wich is not seen” in english).
Anyhow, on the social science in school, the topic for the period is human rights. We have discussed a lot whether it should be legal tho sell your own organs (to sell your kidney or whatever). I think it should be allowed, because when people sell their organs it’s often the last way out to save their lives. If we stop them from doing that, they will die.
Then an interesting question came up. Should’nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don’t “drive out” poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair? Anyway I’ll be back, i got to catch the bus now. Share your thoughts!
No. Organs are scarce. Rich buyers will drive up the price of organs. The higher price will cause more people to want to sell their organs. It may also make people want to invest in technology to grow organs inside animals.
If you set the price lower, people won’t want to sell their organs as much. No one will want to invest in organ growing technology.
Computers were once expensive. But because some people were willing to pay a lot of money for them, more businesses tried to make better and cheaper computers. Now, everyone can have a computer because of all that capital investment and competition among entrepreneurs. It would be great if organs were as cheap as computers in 30 years.
Growing them outside would be even better. You probably meant that anyway.
Also, there’s a moral thing to be said about not agreeing with price controls, since nobody has a right to tell you how much you can charge; except the customer, that is, who might not be able or willing to pay your asking price.
The fixed price on organs right now is 0 dollars/euros. Supposedly to help poor people. The only thing this does is completely stiffle the market for organs.
I agree with Snowflake on this, markets will allocate. There is a current blackmarket for organs now since the price is kept artificially low. Therefore, instead of the rich buying up a finite supply of organs, black market agents are beginning to take them.
This was interesting! Do you really think it’s possible to develop technology so you can “cultivate/grow” organs outside humans and animals? It would be nice to read a little more about that, any sources?
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Hopefully, you or someone else will find the following quote (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplant) interesting enough to warrant the thread-necromancy:
At the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in North Carolina, Dr. Anthony Atala and his colleagues have successfully extracted muscle and bladder cells from several patients’ bodies, cultivated these cells in petri dishes, and then layered the cells in three-dimensional molds that resembled the shapes of the bladders. Within weeks, the cells in the molds began functioning as regular bladders which were then implanted back into the patients’ bodies.[13] The team is currently working on re-growing over 22 other different organs including the Liver, Heart, Kidneys and Testicles.[14]
@Egoist: Yes, using stem cells, it is possible to grow specific organs in a lab. Because organs are so valuable to their donors, allowing them to be sold would likely stimulate research, development and investment into stem cells and production of artificial organs from the private sector. Also, many organs can be harvested at death - allowing people to elect to sell their organs (rather than merely donate them) would increase the number of organs available from the newly dead and would give people a way to pay for their funerals without being a burden to their family and friends.
And if medical insurance companies can capitalize brain surgery, I’m sure they can afford the price of an organ sold in an open market and, at current prices for surgery and current organ availability, I suspect the price-tag from the implantation operation (surgeon’s labor) would dwarf the price of the organ itself. All around, a free market in organs is a win-win. The poor don’t win out from fixing the price of organs to zero… instead, we all lose out.
By the way, I am the one who recommended that you read Bastiat… can you tell me how you liked him, both his ideas and his French? How was it? Was it boring, engaging, is his prose artful?
Remember that today, most organs are donated. Governments have monopolized this trade and outlawed the free market. There is a maximum price of $0 on organs. The result is literally criminal!
In the absent of such a coercive monopoly, those donations would still be there. But t hey would likely find their way to all those who can’t afford to buy them on the market. Today, even a millionare must resort to a donated organ or turn “criminal” by seeking and risking an organ on the black market.
At a fixed maximum price, potential donors are kept out of the market. There will be a shortage! Rationing takes place and you hurt everybody; rich and poor. Such is the result of envious or ignorant policies.
Also, If there was no price control and therefore, no shortage, the poor would have a far better chance of getting access to an organ by resorting to private charity, help from family and friends, or even receiving a loan. But all is of no use if the supply is curtailed.
It’s just that I’m using them right now and may object to someone else placing them on the market.
From the standpoint of individualism is it not only the organs you have that are scarce? (…because no one else has a legitimate claim to them and, likewise, you have no legitimate claim to organs that others are using? )
I was just being selfish - trying to come up with a good reason not to have a market for organs.
I subjectively resent someone else placing a value on a kidney I am already using.
What next - make it mandatory to sell it when I’m done with it?
Granted, the situation we have now is no better. A fixed price of $0.00 - organ sale prohibition - promotes organized crime.
I don’t see that fixing any other price on organs would do anything different.
Every other market allows the owner to determine whether or not his property is for sale and what price he decides is worth more than the property itself. Why should a market for organs be any different?