Organ selling

            Although my gut reaction is against kidney selling, I can’t think of any reasons why people should not be able to sell or buy a kidney.

            My initial reaction to kidney selling is that kidney selling is coercive because the sellers are pushed into the transaction by their financial situation.  However, I think for coercion to be an issue, there needs to be a reason why other forms of “coercion” that are more common in our society are different.  For example, there seem to be many jobs that end up being done by those who are poorer largely because of their financial situation, such as those jobs that are physically taxing on the body (arguably as much as donating a kidney is) like coal mining and working in agriculture, or jobs that seem generally unpleasant a la Dirty Jobs.  This similarity suggests that there is not much that is unique about the “coercive” aspect of kidney selling.

            Of course, I still think that there should be certain safeguards in place to protect those who may be vulnerable; some safeguards are so easy to implement that not implementing them actually seems to make the transaction exploitative.  An example of one such measure is ensuring that adequate healthcare is provided to the seller.  Furthermore, I think that allowing poverty to exist without taking measures as a society would be wrong as well.  Examples of these measures could be ensuring that everyone in a society has basic necessities such as food and housing.  Without moving towards enacting these measures, it seems to me that society, specifically those with higher socioeconomic statuses, would essentially be forcing people to remain poor and then forcing them into organ selling and other dangerous jobs or transactions, which is clearly wrong and coercive.

            Ultimately, it seems to me that unless I am opposed to many of the transactions that already take place between the rich and the poor, I would have to accept organ selling as well, provided that the measures I mention above are in place.