so

yesterday when i was driving home from my parents house i heard a debate on npr. the people were debating legalizing a system where you would be monetarily compensated for donating an organ. apparently there are lots of people out there who feel like you should be able to just pay for an organ if you need a transplant, instead of waiting for one to be donated. the argument being that then you could just get one when you needed one and wouldn't have to wait or potentially die on the list. the argument against is that it will essentially price people out of getting transplants, and that it wouldn't increase the number of donors anyway. now i'm not sure about all the details, i'm sure there is more info on the npr webpage and various places on the internet. but from what i did hear, i think i'd be really ambivalent about supporting cash for organs. dad almost died on the transplant list. if they hadn't done the first surgery (on a thursday) the doctors said he wouldn't have lived through the weekend. his liver wasn't functioning really at all and his kidneys were starting to fail, and his blood sugar was out of whack as well. dad had three false alarms, three livers that they considered, that dad went to danville, got ready for surgery, and then the doctors said no. the fourth liver was his first transplant and his fifth shot is the one he has now. all of those livers came from donors. none of them were compensated, and in my dads case, he needed an entire liver so his donors were deceased. in america we have a system where the wealthiest members of our society get the best of everything. so why would this make transplants any different? the rich already have better health care, so now we'll price the poor out of organs as well? it just doesn't sit well with me. one of the debaters brought up blood donation, and that in america and in england they used to pay for blood donations. then england stopped the compensation and america still had compensation for a while, and england was getting more donations uncompensated, than america was getting compensated. so we switched to a non-compensation system and that's where we still are today. incidentally dad used upwards of 30 units of donated blood in his transplants. it's an interesting debate, one that i'm sure will continue and hopefully will get some more press and more voices to contribute. what do my legions of readers have to say?

UPDATE: here's a wall street journal blog about cash for organs