A market in organs would treat human bodies as commodities

The argument

Opponents of legalisation argue that some things are degraded by being priced, and that the human body is the clearest case. Once organs are bought and sold, a kidney has a market value, and so, by implication, does the person it came out of. Opponents argue that this does not merely offend sensibilities but changes how people are regarded and treated: bodies become inventory, with prices that vary by quality, and the poor become a supply. The practical consequences follow from the commodification rather than being separate from it. Opponents point out that a market creates incentives to recruit, and recruitment of the vulnerable is profitable; that sellers have reason to conceal medical history that would disqualify them, making organs less safe for recipients; that brokers emerge wherever the sums are large; and that families and creditors gain a direct interest in a person's organs. Each of these is an effect of pricing bodies, and opponents argue they would not be contained by regulation, because the incentive to evade the rules is created by the very thing being legalised. Opponents add that legalisation would likely damage the donation system it is meant to supplement. Unpaid donation rests on the understanding that organs are given rather than traded; where an organ has a price, giving one away becomes a forgone payment, and families asked to consent after a death may reasonably ask why they should not be paid. The altruistic supply is thus eroded by the market introduced to augment it. Because pricing human organs treats people as commodities, with consequences that regulation cannot contain, this argument concludes, their sale should remain prohibited.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents of legalisation reply that the objection protects a sensibility at the cost of lives, since the operation is already lawful when performed for free and only the payment is forbidden. They argue that paying blood plasma donors, surrogates and trial participants has not reduced those people to commodities, and that the recruitment and concealment risks identified are features of the unregulated trade prohibition has produced rather than consequences that regulation could not contain.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That a transaction prices an organ does not establish that it prices the person, any more than paid labour prices the worker. The premise asserts the transfer from part to person rather than arguing for it. [Rejecting P2] These incentives describe the black market that prohibition has not prevented, so the comparison the premise needs is with that market rather than with an ideal of unpaid donation. Recruitment of the vulnerable, concealment and brokerage are features of the present arrangement too. [Rejecting P3] Erosion of altruistic supply is a prediction, and the premise offers no mechanism beyond the observation that donating would become a forgone payment. Whether total supply would rise or fall is the question at issue, and the premise settles it by assumption.