Why can't we give permission to our survivors to sell our body parts to the medical industry upon our demise?

Question

Why can't we give permission to our survivors to sell our body parts to the medical industry upon our demise?

Answer 1

Don't get me started on the medical profession, they are as crooked and greedy as the government. When they force me to see a doctor twice a year to get my prescriptions refilled just to take my blood pressure and pulse and charge me $160.I doubt they have my interest at heart. Looks like the lawyers will have lots of company in he__ .

Answer 2

You can, but the risk is that they may be so unscrupulous that they determine when they want to harvest the parts. If you hear a knock on the door at 3:00 AM, you know they have come for your parts!

Answer 3

Blu may I suggest the book by Rebecca Skloot called 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' this is a fantastic book about doctors taking this womans cells without asking. These cells were used for polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping and more. Her family never knew until by accident. Now there was law suits waged This is a true story and I don't want to give it away .It is worth reading.I will tell her cells become a billion dollar industry.

Answer 4

it's an underground industry. there have been movies like this. crosses a moral boundary. puts a price on life. in some countries, people can sell a kidney.

Answer 5

Why in God's name would you want to do some like that for. GIVE THEM AWAY PLEASE

Answer 6

You cannot sell body parts. Why would you want to? "Hey, grandma's dead, lets make a killing on her organs!" Ugh.



You may, however, donate your body to science. Or your family can chose to donate your body if you have not left instructions.



I would not like the idea of my children selling my body just to make a quick buck. If we could sell our body parts after death, more people would do it just for the money rather than because that is what their family member wished. *shudder*

Answer 7

They can have mine for free

Answer 8

Check and see if you can add that to a living will.. I know to donate your body to science in pk. There is a booklet you can fill out to donate your body to OU medical but you have to do this while you're living.. I've also been looking at burial plan.. The one i like the best is a green funeral where you are shrouded and laid in the ground.. Like in yellowstone or somewhere. Not feasible for my family but interesting .

Answer 9

I'd want to be cremated, but like you said, "...if my corpse is that valuable, I'd rather my relatives got the money" too.

Answer 10

LOL How did Dick Cheney suddenly find a heart for his transplant which has to be perfectly matched to function? What connections does he have others do not? He sure shot to the top of the transplant list very very quickly, and it was reported to be top secret and no information about the donor to be released. Just like some wealthy local people have done. If they have the money and the correct religion they can fly to Israel, Mexico, India, or the Ukraine to amazingly find their perfect organ. While major news media again refuses to investigate this stuff or the US government turns it's head and allows the practice for some. And the government refuses to force sanctions on those countries and people/religions who have practiced this industry for many years. Or why they don't cut off tax payer funded studies to special/religious hospitals here in the states that only certain privileged people can go for miracle finds and operations that the common Joe cannot get.



I'm on a donor list and bone marrow list. The older we get the less they want our parts and depending on our health issues are. Then we are only worth around a bucks worth of minerals. Legally speaking there is no cost amount on the human body, or so I was advised. The ones, as usual, who get wealthy from all this 'donating' is the health professionals and paper pushers who's business deal with organ retrieval, procurement, transport, and listing.



On "Sixty Minutes" years ago, I think it was, when Bill Clintoon was governor a journalist was hounding them over corruption and a string of dead bodies that surrounded them in their lives and political careers. According to his family after he was found shot to death through a window at his desk said he was working on a story about vast national corruption including

human trafficking and the human organ black market. Saying it was a complex design from the top levels of government to their state police, the mobs, to doctors, religious groups to crematories and funeral homes/cemeteries. Then nothing else was reported on about any of it. Just one of those things swept under the carpet and no-one really thinks about, let alone try to wrap our brains around such things here could happen.

Answer 11

Great question.



It's worth noting that nobody objects much to laws permitting the selling of a few pints of blood, or the selling of a human egg. Because it's understood that payment for those things is a perfectly reasonable incentive to get people to go through the donation process, which is unpleasant in both cases. And it's understood that in both cases, the health of the donor is not going to be compromised.



I suspect that the total market value of a person's donatable organs, even in the best of circumstances, is not millions of dollars. I'm guessing it might be more like fifty or a hundred thousand, tops. A significant amount of money, but not, I think, enough to change a lot of people's minds about what they'd like done with their remains.



My own inclination is to oppose laws permitting people to sell their remains, simply because I think that the number one reason that health care policy in America is nowadays such a horrendous mess is the legal changes over the past half century or so that have allowed medicine in this country to become first and foremost a big-business enterprise.



For this reason, I don't trust the medical establishment at all. And I have a hunch that permitting the sale of organs would wind up being used as a bargaining chip by unethical doctors, hospitals, and medical insurers when dealing with patients with limited means of paying for expensive treatment. (i.e., almost everybody.) A medical insurer might say: "We will agree to pay for your hip replacement, but only if you turn over future ownership of all your internal organs to us." Or something like that. It's the kind of scenario that I think is unnecessary and that should probably be avoided.

Answer 12

Because psychopathic people like me would make sure all the people I have access to make it to the morgue asap. I wouldn't miss such an easy chance to make money. I see you're having murderous feelings too, well that's what I've been trying to arouse in my sucker for so many months in Y!A. It's getting tiring, I need this deed done to move on with my life, I'm looking forward to pretend I'm a lady and meet the man of my dreams. I don't believe in settling, sorry, and a beautiful woman like me deserves the cream of the top. Edit: I'll NEVER end up in jail.. I always get suckers to do my dirty work. I'm not a master manipulator for nothing.

Answer 13

Anyone interested should go to: www.UNOS.org. It stands for "United Network for Organ Sharing".



It is the only list for matching donors with recipients that we have in the U.S. Read about it, it is very interesting.

Oh and Blu, I think you are missing the point about organ transplants. It is a lot more complicated than you or your family just making a buck.



PROFIT? When the gift of life is concerned, most people don't think about profit.



@AS LONG AS YOUR'RE UP, GET ME A LAWYER: Thank you.

I have never seen anyone (Blu) so obessed with this subject. I just happen to be on the transplant list and such a delicate situation, I am so grateful some people have the compassion to donate organs with no desire for compensation. His remarks make me feel disgusted.

Answer 14

A transplant recipient would not be appropriate for harvesting postmortem because of the anti-rejection drugs among other reasons. For that reason no "deal" could be made.



Personally, I think organ donations should mean just that, donation. Profiting off someone in desperate need is repugnant to me.



No worry here, my organs have been in use way too long to be appropriate for donation.

Answer 15

Blu...why would you want to participate in the ULTIMATE PROSTITUTION? Could anyone be that money hungry after death? Donations of the body for research or to replace something for someone to live is the only way. The alternative is not even debatable.

Answer 16

This isn't a legal industry - I'm sure my kids wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to contact a body-snatcher when I pass on. Neither of them is that money-hungry that they'd be phoning around, trying to sell my liver to the highest bidder. Somehow it sounds all wrong. I'm a registered organ donor, that is as far as I'm happy to go. The medicos can have my "bits" for free.

Answer 17

Blu this is a sore subject with me.

First off I am not now or really ever was a JW but as a 11-12 year old I did take bible studies with them.

I feel deep in my heart that organ replacement is not the solution and is in my eyes a bit Frankensteinish.

My mother taught us in her native culture that you were to die with all body parts in tact if possible, I don't necessarily go that far with my beliefs but perhaps there is something behind it.

I have given blood donations 4 times as I have a rare blood type, 3 times for a family friend who had cancer and once for my own son.

My son was given donor bone at UCLA without my pryor knowledge, he was a "charity" case and they do what they want with people , it is all about money after all.

I know even though donors do not get money for their organs, someone is making allot of money off the spare parts.

I saw a show, believe it was 20/20 several years back.

It was all about the coroners office in Calif. taking out the corneas of people and selling them without the families consent.

It hit me hard because during that thime they were refering to, my sister was in that coroners office laid out on a slab.

I was so outraged that they could do such a thing for their own profit without family consent.

Go ahead and sell yourself if that is what you want to do but as long as the hospital, doctors and labs make a huge profit off of the dead, they aren't about to share some of their profits with family members.

It is a personal moral issue.

EDIT: I would like to add that my sister was a very generous person and would probably loved to of helped someone see again but for her corneas to be removed without her daughters permission and for someone to make a profit out of it, makes me sick to my stomach.

Answer 18

""" I'm considering cremation but if my corpse is that valuable I'd rather my relatives got the money. I don't want to give it away for free. """



I'm reading all your answers to see why we can't. I think it's a good idea. Why shouldn't my family profit?



Amen jackie! And again I say. . Amen! Milton made me laugh.

Answer 19

No it is illegal.



I just read a article in the paper where a teenager in China

sold his kidney so he could buy a Apple iPhone and iPad.

He is now suffering from kidney failure and in deteriorating health.

Answer 20

I wasn't aware that one could sell them. I have told my family that if there is anything of use to anyone after I die then they are welcome to take what they need and burn the rest. My sister is a devout Mormon so I had to state my position strongly as they believe you will still need your body after you die. If they could sell anything and make a buck, I would have no objection.

Answer 21

Of course you can. Hire a lawyer and put your request in your will.

Answer 22

I should think that an insurance policy would suffice.

Answer 23

at least grind us up and make fertilizer , or pet food or a weird tasting jam or jelly

Answer 24

Good Idea blu..we should have a will stating our request..=)