Some kidney donors and recipients want Congress to enact a $50,000 tax credit for people who donate a kidney to a stranger. Bioethicists say the idea is `horrific' and 'immoral.'
People in need of kidney transplants can buy better odds, but not a kidney. Federal law bans organ sales in the United States. “It’s basically paying people for organs. They just turned the idea into a tax refund to try and quiet down all the people who hate that idea,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics expert and professor at New York University. “It’s just a more polite way to create a market in body parts.”Critics fear that it could undermine efforts to end illicit organ markets in some foreign countries, where people in poverty may be coerced into selling a kidney or driven to make a decision they’ll regret.
Third, it would send the wrong message to countries that already struggle with unsanctioned transplant tourism — wealthy patients who travel to acquire a kidney. And the cost of a kidney transplant is covered for all Americans under the government’s Medicare program. So low-income kidney patients are not at a disadvantage, bioethicists say.
“If you’re not going to pay people for work, of course you’re going to have a shortage,” Perlman said. “It’s econ 101.”
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