Markets For Human Tissue: Why They Should (Not) Be Encouraged?

Markets For Human Tissue: Why They Should (Not) Be Encouraged
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Abstract
Demand for available human tissues and organs for transplantation in the United States and other countries around the world far outpaces the supply. The consequence in this scenario can be observed through the ever-increasing numbers of people on the waiting list yet to receive an organ or tissue transplant and the rising mortality rates due to lack of organs and tissues that could save lives. Unfortunately, inefficient policies have made it difficult for the transplant community to forge ways in dealing with the problem of scarcity in donations. Many donations are currently made through altruistic acts but have not been sufficient to meet the rising needs. An alternative to establishing the market for human tissues and organs would be appropriate to increase the supply in the market. This move will be effective if the government supports efforts to reduce the current crisis that has resulted in people lacking essential materials that could save lives. Therefore, this paper supports the market for human tissues and organs to solidify the act of altruism, end the scarce supply of human tissues and organs, determine the market price for harvested organs, provide a base for policy support and implementation, deal with cartels and unscrupulous dealers, and drive down the cost of transplant surgery.
Markets For Human Tissue: Why They Should (Not) Be Encouraged
Introduction
While the era of free-market sparked elevated enthusiasm in doing business, there still exist growing controversies over limits of the free enterprise systems on the legality and ethical principles defining what should be sold and what needs to be kept away from the market domain. For instance, the market for human tissues and organs has been clouded with challenges demanding economic, legal, and ethical discussions with different scholars supporting or opposing the enterprise. Deck and Kimbrough (2013) have investigated the issue of market incentives in the business of organ donations from either the living or deceased persons and argue in support of the enterprise that markets serve to increase the supply of human tissue, making them available to those in desperate need. This argument has widely been supported as a way of providing a possible solution to the chronic shortage of human tissues for transplantation. However, other critics have regarded the idea as abhorrent arguing that such a practice is unethical and needs to be discouraged and banned (Wilkinson, 2015). The primary argument provided by critics of the sale of human tissues and organs is the possibility that humans could be commodified where each individual is valued based on their physical components or monetary worth. Other reasons against markets for human tissue include the cartels who may take advantage to make profits out of human body parts and the fading of the gratuitous and discouraging the acts of altruism of transferring health-enhancing or life-saving materials (Mahoney, 2009). Drawing from economic principles as well as ethical and legal arguments on the subject, this paper explores the issue of the human tissue market and provides the case in favor of the enterprise such as solidifying the act of altruism, determine the market price for harvested organs, ending the scarce supply of human tissues, and organs, providing a base for policy support and implementation, dealing with cartels and unscrupulous dealers, and driving down the cost of transplant surgery.
While the argument against the market for human tissues has always been perceived as a system discouraging the act of altruism, economists have described that altruism fits into the economic equations describing utility and that markets facilitate altruistic behaviors rather than discouraging such actions as presented by opponents of human tissue markets (Smith, 2017). Support for altruism as the guiding principle of moral organ donation results from the poor understanding of the market economy in position and policy documents (Moorlock et al., 2014). Countless and unending discussions in regards to overcoming the limitations of altruism to find ways of addressing the scarcity of blood products, bone marrow, and other transplantable organs have been made globally. Presenting a case in support of the market for human tissues in enhancing altruism from an economic point of view is necessary for resolving the stalemate and save thousands of lives that are lost annually due to the current system of uncompensated donation. A market economy for human tissues will encourage moral cooperativeness among people from different backgrounds. This implies that a market for human tissues would facilitate altruistic behavior through bringing strangers, facilitating cooperation, and breaking the ethnic and tribal barriers that have worsened the issue of scarcity in human tissues and organs (Smith, 2017). Many critics have opposed markets for organs and tissues citing that such markets would dilute the value of altruistic behaviors inherent in humans. In the “Moral Limits of Markets”, Michael Sandel argues that markets are known to be coercive and the introduction of human tissues to the market would make them lose value (Sandel, 2013). However, as markets involve exchanges between the seller and the buyer, such activities of organ and tissue transfers are moral from the perspective that such interactions are mutual and voluntary.
In a bid to determine the market price for harvested organs, it is necessary to support market for human tissues and organs (Hansmann, 1989). The price that insurance firms would want to pay for the future rights to organs derived from cadavers would largely depend on the prices they are charged at the time of harvesting. By nature, the health insurance business is extremely competitive and such companies are only able to take a market rate of investment for their efforts as intermediaries in the business for organs. This means that the expected price received by such insurance firms for the organs will be passed to their clients through premium reductions that are offered to them. Therefore, as a way to determine the price for the organs harvested, it is important to establish a market for such organs and allow the forces of demand and supply to take course and determine such prices. However, it would require the government intervention to administratively determine the price for cadaveric organs rather than allowing the market forces to take the lead. For instance, government policies should be designed to allow insurance companies to receive not more than $10,000 for a donated kidney of $15,000 for liver (Hansmann, 1989). In this respect, insurance companies will then set their premium reductions based on the government-set prices for the organs. The set prices will also account for the probability that the insured person will live or die in the future or the organs could be of any value in case the insured dies later on. This mechanism of setting the prices of cadaveric organs or those donated by living persons will only be possible with the setting of a market for human tissues and organs by governments around the world. Therefore, it is critical that markets for human tissues and organs are supported to avoid discrepancies in setting prices for donated organs.
As a solution to addressing the issue of scarcity in human tissues and organs marketing these life-saving materials should be encouraged. Becker and Elise (2007) have evaluated the provision of monetary incentives for cadaveric and live organ donation in the market and found that such a proactive would significantly increase supply in the market and eliminate the long queues in the transplantation waiting list, suffering, and mortality. Statistics show that the numbers of people on the waiting list have been increasing since 1990 with the number of transplants and living transplants maintaining a low record as shown in Fig 1 below. Besides, marketing of organ transplants would reduce the cost of transplantation surgery by over 12 percent. From the observations made over the years, there have been persistent gaps between the demand for transplants and the supply, in part due to the system that does not allow monetary incentives in acquiring organs from the cadavers or living persons. Systems being the barriers to efficient supply of organs and tissues for transplant, economists have proposed the incentivization of the market in obtaining live and cadaveric human tissues and organs to save lives. An efficient economic...