Dirty, Pretty Things

Should organ sales be legal? Give the Kantian argument. Do you agree? Where would a utilitarian stand?

Organ sales at the moment is illegal, but like many other laws, like drinking and driving, littering, and pirating music, they are often broken. Although most of what I listed is other than drunk driving does not have the same affect illegal organ sales does on the body. The difference between organ sales and organ donation is that for one, you are making money off of your own organs. If this was legal, there would be more hospital protections, such as verified surgeons and anesthetics. Legalizing these sales makes it so that the practice is done safer, but does not change from how we see in the movie Dirty Pretty Things. There will still be underground operations, and there will still be people getting taken advantage of for their organs, that was without a doubt already happening today. I think though that the autonomy and the effects of organ sales is really what matters to people the most in usual thought. For me, I see no other benefit of making sales legal, and I believe that it should stay illegal. Although I am on the fence about it, I understand the benefits for many people who need the organs, but it is hard to say what will come of the sales.

For Kant, the CI cannot allow organ sales to be legal. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, this idea of duty is passed around with examples on how being duty based at times cannot be looked at as good for everyone. ” For one thing, as with the Jim Crow laws of the old South and the Nuremberg laws of Nazi Germany, the laws to which these types of “actions from duty” conform may be morally despicable. Respect for such laws could hardly be thought valuable.” These actions were in fact grotesque, and bring about a thought evoking session on organ sales. If we are giving away organs as charity or because you feel as though you must, it may be seen as something from your duty. When you start to sell, then things get dirty. When you look at good will for Kant, it mostly means that you have rationality and that you have a duty in order to do something. The fact that you put a price on something from your body also devalues humans as something worth meaningless strips of colored paper. This makes it nearly impossible for Kant to approve of organ sales. You have no obligation or duty to sell your organs, and it isn’t rationale unless you are in need of fast money, Kant couldn’t say this is the correct option for anyone. Selling something makes it so that everything suddenly revolves around money, it has nothing to do with morals once you slap a price tag on it.

For Mill’s utility, the GHP makes it so that if the majority of people are benefiting from it, then it is morally justifiable. The sales for organs has the potential to shorten the donor list so that those without money will be able to get organs before those who could pay or who would rather pay for them. I do think though that the sudden push to sell organs would help everyone stay healthy, in order to have good working organs to sell. Healthier people at times can be happier than those without as good of health, so it would make sense to keep your product as good as possible so people will buy them. But I think that overall, minorities will still be exploited for organs, like in the movie. I think that under the GHP, often times the minority will be stumbled over in order to better please the majority, which was something Mill is against. Your actions must be “not at all motivated by a prospective outcome or some other extrinsic feature of our conduct except insofar as these are requirements of duty itself,” so if the outcome is money, there is no duty to sell organs or allow the selling of organs.

I find that I agree more with Kant in that putting a money value on your body for anything like labor or sex or your own organs is something I cannot easily agree with, but that I understand that this is something that does happen, an that at times someone can willingly make the choice do to do if they would please. I also have never been in such a situation, and think that the money someone could make from these situations might not be enough for me to justify selling parts of my body. I still have a job but in society and living with other people, I don’t have the comfortable option to not have a job, it’s more of a force, even if I am happy to work. I agree the sales of organs could make people happy, but I lean more towards Kant’s thought to keep organ sales illegal.

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