Organ transplans can come at a price

Feb. 10, 2005
By Phil Lineburg
Staff Writer

Organ transplantation has extended the lives of people who face certain death.  But as technology and scientific advancement bring positive changes to a society, there can be a price paid.

Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, Dr. James Lindemann Nelson, a professor of philosophy at Michigan State University discussed this topic and many others while on campus the last week in January.

In the fashion of many great philosophers, he posed many questions with respect to the right and wrong, the good and bad of organ transplantation.  He is a proponent of organ transplantation, but supported his argument with both the pros and cons of its practice.  The practice, in many cases, outweighs the costs it has created.

"There are several countries in the world, Spain for example, some countries in Latin America as well, that have a policy to allow people to descent from being organ providers," Dr. Nelson said.  "If you don't specifically say, 'not me,' you're considered fair game."

Nelson went on to say that in some of those countries it has not made a great deal of impact on the actual shortage of organs, because while the policy is in the books it is not enforced.  But in Spain, the people really seem behind the policy, and it has provided a good supply of organs.

Dr. Nelson spent much of his lecture referring to the American practice of organ donation as an altruistic gift or a super gift, as opposed to other views that see organ transplantation as an obligation.  He discussed related issues to organ donation, such as vending or the commercial sale of organs and other parts of the body.

"I'm sort of amazed that [organ vending] has not progressed further in the United States, given our deep and enduring love affair with the market, but I'm glad that it hasn't," Nelson said.  "There is reason to believe that the market approach may make more organs available.  We can't be sure about that."

Aside from the sale of organs, products produced from humans are sold regularly.  Hair, mother's milk, eggs and sperms are legally sold.

"Often a distinction is made between what is renewable and what is not renewable, in this context.  People sell their hair - there has never been a big issue about that," Nelson said.

"The issue with sperm and egg vending, I think, is really more related to the offspring, than the sale.  I'm not just concerned about selling ovum and sperm, I'm actually concerned about giving them away, because the children of those donations might have some claim to some kind of relationship or at least knowledge about their genetic parents."

Nelson said it’s interesting so many devices are set-up for adults to have genetic relationships with the young people they raise, but that people seldom think about children's interest in having relationships with those that rear them."

One of the problems with policies of egg and sperm donation - egg and sperm vending - we have in this country is that we really haven't thought that much about what's the moral state held by the offspring of these activities.  We take seriously the interest of adults, [but we need to take seriously the interest that children have]."

Dr. Nelson is the co-author of three books.  The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program was established in 1973 to spread liberal arts education and ideas to the non-academic public, and those beyond the traditional campus.  Nelson was the first person from the program to be in residence at St. Ambrose.

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