Parts from a single body could fetch up to $150,000

The Times (UK) ^ | December 23, 2005 | Nigel Hawkes

[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.

[hedgetrimmer]

No matter how they write it up on the bill, they're selling you part of another human being.

No argument there.

[hedgetrimmer]

Do you know where you can get a free organ transplant?

Kansas.

[Calpernia]

FR Keyword Search: Body Brokers

For related Body Parts incidents

[BykrBayb]

Area residents gave more than $204,000 to get Jarrett on the transplant list at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The funds are administered through the Children's Organ Transplant Association.

That's wonderful! Thank God for their generosity in buying the organs that the Children's Organ Transplant Association was selling.

[hedgetrimmer]

Thank God for their generosity in buying the organs that the Children's Organ Transplant Association was selling.

Technically speaking the COTA can't sell organs. I don't think the neomort that 'donated' his stomach and intestines got any monetary compensation for the act.

[BykrBayb]

$204,000 is a lot of money for something that is supposedly free. They weren't selling the pleasure of an operation (or series of operations.) Without the so-called free organs, there would be no operation. Just because the price tag isn't directly placed on the organs, doesn't mean it's all free.

The funds are administered through the Children's Organ Transplant Association.

Funds for what? A trip to Disney World? No. Organs. "Free" organs. $204,000 worth of "free" organs.

[hedgetrimmer]

$204,000 is a lot of money for something that is supposedly free

Are you saying the donor got $204K?

[BykrBayb]

No.

[Chickensoup]

You can already sell your blood and hair



You can sell use of your uterus, but not your vagina except in selected counties in Nevada. Some things just dont sell. I read a book called "City of Joy" about the sale of skeletons in Calcutta.

I dont think selling bodies is a good idea here.

[hedgetrimmer]

I see. You're saying that the people who perform the work associated with an organ donation should not get paid. Then it will be "free".

[BykrBayb]

Wrong again.

[hedgetrimmer]

You complain the organ transplant isn't free, so to fix that problem everyone should donate their time and expertise.

[BykrBayb]

When did I say anything like that?

[Hildy]

I agree. If I want to sell a kidney, why shouldn't I be able to?

[BykrBayb]

I guess it's no worse than selling skin.

[gondramB]

Hildy:I agree. If I want to sell a kidney, why shouldn't I be able to?"

The ironic thing is that it's legal for you to sell your kidney when you are alive but not legal to have your kidney sold after you are dead.

[hedgetrimmer]

I guess it's no worse than selling skin.

Everything is relative in the secular humanist world, isn't it?

[BykrBayb]

Yep. A kidney here, a lampshade there. A piece of your liver, or your disabled child's bone marrow. As long as the price is right, some people just avoid working out any possible moral details. Just do it!

[hedgetrimmer]

Morally, only one of a pair of vital organs or a part of a vital organ may be transplanted. This may be done only as an act of charity after the donor has been fully informed and when the excision of the vital organ or part of the vital organ will not cause death or debilitating mutilation. Only living organs are suitable for transplantation. Vital organs cannot be transplanted from a dead body. Only tissues, such as corneas or heart valves, are suitable for transplantation after the heart has stopped and there is no circulation. The fictitious concoction of "brain death" is a fraudulent subterfuge coined and expended to deprive defenseless persons of their God-given right to life, often for profit. Removal of vital organs after a declaration of "brain death" is precisely what causes the death of the patient whose vital organ or organs are thus excised.

While this doubtless may prolong the life of the person receiving such organs by transplant, the procedure does violate the moral principle that evil may not be done that good might come of it. That is, a good end does not justify an evil means.

--Paul A. Byrne, M.D., a neonatalogist and pediatrician in Toledo, Ohio

[nw_arizona_granny]

Have you ever read the book "Coma", must be 25 to 30 years ago that it came out.

Said this would happen.