Argumentative Essay On Kidney Donation

Society dictates which actions are accepted and which are not. An example of socially accepted behaviour like volunteering is encouraged, while doing drugs is frowned upon. However, this might change over time, like the selling of slaves, drinking alcohol (in the United States), or smoking marihuana. But why do these habits change? And what are the consequences? In the case on whether selling parts of the human body is ethical or not, opinions differ. Iran has introduced regulated paid kidney donation, in order to eliminate the waiting list for a kidney transplantation, and succeeded, while in western society this is illegal. The purpose of this text is to sketch a clear image of the argument about selling bodyparts, and will conclude that

Although there is this second option, today the cost of dialysis treatment is significantly higher than the cost of kidney transplant (A.J. Ghods & S. Savaj, october 2006). That leaves transplantation as the most logical option, but demand for renal replacement therapy (RRT) will keep on rising. Take the United States for instance, in 2003 a number of 360,000 people who had end stage renal disease (ESRD) were on renal replacement therapy. This number will rise to 650,000 according to a recent forecast. However, not everyone can afford these kinds of expenses. As Arrigo Schieppati and Giuseppe Remuzzi said in their article Chronic renal diseases as a public health problem: Epidemiology, social, and economic implications (Bergamo, 2005) “The prevalence rate of RRT is 644 patients per million people in the 15 countries of the European Union , where the average gross income is over US $22,000 per capita, as compared with a prevalence rate of 166 patients per million population in Central and Eastern European countries, where the average per capita income is US $4480.” This suggests a significant impact of wealth on prevalance rate of RRT. In general, capitalistic countries have a higher income per capita and better access to