New at Reason

February 7, 2007

Who owns your body parts?  Kerry Howley discovers that the answer is, "just about everyone but you."

Comments

thoreau|2.7.07 @ 12:10PM|#

Great article, Kerry.

Organ transplantation and tissue products aren't the only uses of cadavers. There's also the need for teaching cadavers in medical schools. I've told my wife to give me to a medical school, so I can deliver one final science lesson on my way out. As I understand it, there is a shortage, and that shortage could be relieved if families were compensated.

Maybe my wife can talk them into pretending that I'm still alive, putting me on the faculty roster for that semester, and sending a paycheck appropriate for a faculty member in the medical school...

|2.7.07 @ 12:48PM|#

So the family facing bankruptcy decides to sell one of their children for parts. . .except that none of their children have died yet. . .

|2.7.07 @ 1:03PM|#

Jubjub: How is that different from the way things are now? Only now it's a black market and there's no way to trace these things, plus supply is artificially low making it a better deal for the bankrupt family than it would be in a free market.

|2.7.07 @ 1:30PM|#

So the family facing bankruptcy decides to sell one of their children for parts. . .except that none of their children have died yet. . .

The only thing stopping families from murdering children and engaging in human trafficing is the legal prohibition on the body part trade.

The only thing stopping me from carjacking my neighbor is jaywalking laws.

|2.7.07 @ 1:47PM|#

Only half in jest, I propose an Undead Permanent Fund, like the Alaskan Permanent Fund, which exists to receive a cadaver and issues one share (with set guidelines for rejectable corpses), then seeks best market-value payments for useful tissue, proceeds to add to fund principal; invests the fund medium-conservatively, and distributes interest per share each year, the cadaver's estate to designate the beneficiary of their one share. And the share never dies (it's undead, after all) but accrues to a sole beneficiary, serially over time.

If today's cadaver street value is $7000, a share should throw off $350-400 per year. Unless the future market for tissue collapses (new participants bring less new capital per share to the fund), annual share proceeds should stay stable or increase in value.

Absolutely not an undead pyramid scheme (heh, mummies); new cadaver proceeds would not pay out the beneficiaries of the first cadavers.

Think of the guilt trip you can play on small children when you explain how Gramps gave them christmas this year... as a working stiff!

(sorry)

Graphite|2.7.07 @ 2:21PM|#

I bet my dessicated remains could fetch 10 bars of gold-pressed latinum on the Ferengi Futures Exchange.

Sam Franklin|2.7.07 @ 3:16PM|#

Compensation to donors might take a variety of forms, from reimbursement of funeral expenses to charitable donation to direct payment. Tissue is already treated as property once it is processed; if it were legal property before it left the donor's body, sales would go to donors' estates along with other assets. Profits from their sale would be willed along with the house and the car, left to favored grandchildren and pet causes.

In other words the profits go to the same people who have proxy over the person's medical care. Even if there is not a proxy, the person directing their own medical care would feel pressure to not be treated in a way that would decrease the abundance of the harvest.

Right or wrong, this is the true reason that we let some people profit from corpses, but not the corpses legal beneficiaries.

Howley's long article is a lot of misdirection away from this central connundrum.

Funny thing is I could be convinced that ppl should be allowed to sell their corpses notwithstanding the unseemly economic pressures discussed above. That would be a much different article, tho.

|2.7.07 @ 3:55PM|#

So the family facing bankruptcy decides to sell one of their children for parts. . .except that none of their children have died yet. . .

If they are willing to go that far, I expect the would make more money selling live children.

Sam Franklin|2.7.07 @ 4:22PM|#

make more money selling live children

that is legal where you live?

Jennifer|2.7.07 @ 6:24PM|#

So the family facing bankruptcy decides to sell one of their children for parts.

So the family facing bankruptcy decides to murder one of their children for the life insurance.

Every single point you can make about the abusive potential of selling organs can be made about life insurance as well.

|2.7.07 @ 6:36PM|#

that is legal where you live?

As legal as killing your children to sell their organs....

Dave W.|2.7.07 @ 7:34PM|#

As legal as killing your children to sell their organs....

Touche, but keep in mind that selling children is an easy offense to prove compared to the offense of letting a sick child die so that her organs can be sold after the disease carries her soul to Jesus.

Jennifer|2.7.07 @ 9:36PM|#

selling children is an easy offense to prove compared to the offense of letting a sick child die so that her organs can be sold after the disease carries her soul to Jesus.

Or letting her die so that the life insurance companies have to pay out after the disease carries her soul to Jesus.

Egon|2.7.07 @ 10:59PM|#

Funny--I was just discussing this at dinner last night (that sounds so genteel--until I tell you it was Fred's Mexican Cantina and it was Taco Tuesday).

Ownership implies the right to do with something as I wish. Therefore, the important question is: If I don't own my body, then who does?

Sam Franklin|2.8.07 @ 5:42AM|#

Life insurance companies don't insure sick kids, Jennifer.

On the other hand, when a bankrupt family pays for life insurance on a healthy child who turns up dead, that will almost certainly attract some forensic interest.

PROACTIVE SOLUTION:

Maybe a person's organs should be saleable, but only to buy a medical care voucher to be used in treating terminal illnesses for the person while the person is still alive.

Whoever owns the rights to the organs, after the voucher transfers rights to some third party (eg, medical research facility) would have to bear the risk that the terminally ill person would die in a way that destroyed their organs. However, this seems like a minor objection that could be dealt with.

There would also be a problem of defining what a terminal illness was so that we did not have people pressured to sell their organs just to get insulin for their diabetes or to pay their medical insurance premiums.

Despite the objections, I think this kind of proposal is more likely to change the status quo than the "I just don't see the problem here" approach that Ms. Howley takes.

An ungodly a mount of an average person's medical expenditures take place in the last year of a person's life. These are the expenditures that should be reimbursable by turning in your corpse (as it were).

I have a hard time believing I am the first person to think of this compromise position.

Jennifer|2.8.07 @ 9:45AM|#

Life insurance companies don't insure sick kids, Jennifer.

And organ banks don't take the organs of sick kids, either. I had to interview some organ-bank people for an article I did last summer--even among those who sign organ-donor cards, only a relative few will ever have their organs used to save someone else. They don't want (and can't use) the organs of someone who died of a long-term disease, for example; basically, you're limited to cases where otherwise healthy people had an accident which left them brain-dead but otherwise functional; furthermore, they have to die in a hospital setting so that the organs can be harvested before they go bad. Little Johnny the leukemia victim will NOT have any of his body parts go into another person, nor will the woman murdered in her home.

Dave W.|2.8.07 @ 10:11AM|#

They don't want (and can't use) the organs of someone who died of a long-term disease

ya know I thought that, too, but this blog post seems to indicate otherwise.

Anyway, if can actually free up the market in terminally ill corpses under my proposal, then we will have a better idea about how useful these corpses really are.

I can imagine that someone who is interested in corpses would prefer young fresh ones, but sometimes you make do. Don't forget, as a journalist your job is to be SKEPTICAL of what these people tell you, even when it is true to some extent.

Jennifer|2.8.07 @ 10:24AM|#

Don't forget, as a journalist your job is to be SKEPTICAL of what these people tell you, even when it is true to some extent.

No, Dave, I'm under no obligation to be skeptical of the truth. By the way, where were they wrong? Specifically, can you point me to any cases where the organs of a person who died of a terminal illness were used as donor organs?

RTFA|2.8.07 @ 11:26AM|#

I think bones are organs anyway.

Jennifer|2.8.07 @ 11:36AM|#

Dave, were the bones of the cancer victim then implanted into another person, or were they instead used as learning aids in a school or ground down for the calcium?

I'm still waiting for you to give an example of diseased organs implanted into people. Remember when you lectured me on the need for skepticism? One case where skepticism is vital is when someone like you makes claims and then refuses to back them up with any evidence.

Dave W.|2.8.07 @ 12:25PM|#

I'm still waiting for you to give an example of diseased organs implanted into people.

This is a different question than the one you osed above. First of all, you wanted to know about donor organs from diseased people. Now you are asking about donor organs from diseased people that are transplanted. It is not clear, in the context of this thread why only transplantable organs count. In this particular thread, where we are discussing the selling, as opposed to donation, of organs. It would seem that any organs that have cash value, but cannot be sold are part of the problem.

But you still aren't finished moving the goalposts. You just don't want to know about donor organs from diseased people that are transplanted where the organ that was transplanted was one of the same organs that was diseased.

That isn't skepticism. That is idiocy. of course they don't transplant diseased organs -- because then the recipient would get the disease.

here is your link:

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2007/01/09/jerry_orbach_ey.php

If you google around a bit you will find that organs from terminal patients can be transplanted so long as the terminal disease did not damage the organs being transplanted. sometimes this can be a tricky issue (eg, organ donations from prisoners with Hep C), but sometimes not.

I can help you be a better investigative journalist, but we need to prep prior to the interviews, rather than months later.

Dave W.|2.8.07 @ 12:26PM|#

"But you still aren't finished moving the goalposts. You just don't want to know about donor organs from diseased people that are transplanted where the organ that was transplanted was one of the same organs that was diseased."

should be

--But you still aren't finished moving the goalposts. You just don't want to know about donor organs from diseased people that are transplanted, but more specifically donor organs from diseased people where the organ that was transplanted was one of the same organs that was diseased.--

Jennifer|2.8.07 @ 1:28PM|#

First of all, you wanted to know about donor organs from diseased people. Now you are asking about donor organs from diseased people that are transplanted.

A "donor organ" is one that's transplanted or intended to be used as such, you twit.

Dave W.|2.8.07 @ 3:28PM|#

What is it called when one donates organs that do not end up being transplanted then?

One-who-donates-organs-for-purposes-other-than-transplant.

that is a little cumbersome even for a lawyer!