Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Sticking Price Tags on Body Parts
A couple recent, somewhat conflicting developments in the world of organ donations highlight some ongoing debates about how—and whether—to stick monetary values on body parts, and more broadly, the challenges of creating rules to govern new technologies.
In January, the National Kidney Foundation released a new set of recommendations regarding kidney transplants that, among other things, supports reimbursing live donors for any expenses or health problems related to donation. Although the NKF is explicit that it is not supporting paying people for organs, its position represents a reversal of sorts. In 2003, the NKF came out against directly or indirectly paying organ donors--including compensating for lost wages and the like. The NKF’s reversal comes as the number of people waiting for kidneys continues to climb—close to 80,000 people are now waiting for a new kidney—and represents a shift toward a growing public conversation on whether financial incentives can help address the growing demand for organ transplants.
At the same time, a judge has ruled in a semi-high profile divorce case that a husband cannot demand his wife pay him $1.5 million or return a kidney that he donated during their marriage as part of their divorce. The divorce case referee did hedge slightly, in holding that the court might still consider the “sacrifices, magnanimity and devotion” of the organ donation, but refused to allow the divorce agreement to explicitly consider the kidney to be a “marital asset.”
For various reasons, neither the judge nor the NKF want to turn kidneys—or other organs—into commodities, but in both cases, their ambivalence highlights the reluctance to completely forego the idea that we own our biologic material in some way or another. And in doing so, they provide some hints at some pending questions about ownership rights and biology that will continue to pop up with advances in genetics, fertility treatments and other cutting edge forms of medical care.