Posted on 12/27/2005 2:55:40 AM PST by Wampus SC
THE market in body tissue in the US is believed to be worth more than $500 million (£288 million) a year.
(snip)
Heart valves are said to fetch up to $7,000 each in the US, and skin $1,000 per square foot. A body could be worth about $150,000, according to Art Caplan, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
(snip)
In some cases people in charge of willed-body programmes have profited illegally. In 2002 Allen Tyler, the head of the cadaver programme at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, pleaded guilty to 66 counts of illegal mutilation. It is estimated that he sold parts from 133 bodies, earning $465,000. He was sentenced to 20 years in jail.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
You have any such thing?
Gives new meaning to your local "body shop" and "salvage yard".
Can we get a ping here?
Note Caplan sighting.
Michael Crighton was right. To the highest bidder here we have a kidney blood type O. What am I bid?
I know this is a bit cynical... but the reason those prices are so high is that most people don't donate their body parts. The doctors make money on transplants. The hospitals make money on transplants. But the donor gets nothing.
I think it's time to change that law.
We need an ebay for body parts. eBody? kneeBay?
Why charge to save a life? everyone should donate you can't use the parts when your dead one liver can save four people from death,look at hep c stats.
They'd have to appraise me on the Antique Roadshow :(
Your right a person should beable to sell off his parts.
Just like another life insurance policy for his kin.
good God. Learn econ 101. By charging, you save lots and lots and lots of lives by creating the supply. No chare, no supply. The only thing that needs to be worked out here is a standard form so that the heir of dead people get the $$$, not crooked doctors. Better yet, you should be allowed to sell the right to your body parts now, and pocket the dicounted cash while still alive.
I have read of the ethics of selling body parts, and personally I dont see anything unethical about it. If a Doctor doesnt mind charging 300,000 dollars to do the operation why shouldnt the donor get a couple of bucks.
Now having said that lets look at the practical side.
The cost of a funeral today runs in the neighborhood of 8 to 10 thousand dollars. Why shouldnt the donor at the very least be able to pay for his funeral off his donation?
Of course my plan is to live till there is nothing worth donating , but thats beside the point.
Based on the principal of supply and demand. I would estimate Kerrys brain to be about $7,000 per ounce. Given it's so small and limited in supply. Of course there'd have to be a demand for it in the first place, perhaps the foreign market...France perhaps? They seem to enjoy smelly useless things.
I'm with you, actualy well on my way. This past week has claimed a massive toll on my liver. I've been smothering it in alcohol, one tumbler at a time. Cheers!
I wouldn't mind my family getting a "cut" of the action...should I pass on...why should the "carvers" get all the bucks!
Yeah...
The LEGAL profits ought to good enough for them!
What do you suggest?
Drill a hole above the casket and drop the money in?
They stem from those funeral homes that did illegal bone and organ recovery (New York). I think they are hooked up with the same group that got Alistair Cooke's remains.
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