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Is It Ethical For Patients With Kidney Disease To Purchase Kidneys From The World's Poor?
One controversial, and almost universally illegal, approach to tackling the shortage of kidneys for transplantation is for a patient with kidney disease to buy a kidney from a living donor who is usually in a developing country. But is the buying and selling of organs ethical? A provocative debate in PLoS Medicine considers both sides of the issue.
Tarif Bakdash, a pediatric neurologist and Assistant Professor of Bioethicis at Damascus University, Syria, argues that "poor people should have the right to exercise their autonomy by selling their organs."
