UK People Encouraged To Sell Kidneys To Help Donor Shortage

People Encouraged To Sell their Kidneys To Help Donor Shortage

A controversial suggestion has been made by a senior researcher at Dundee University that people should be encouraged to sell their kidneys for at least £28,000 to help the desperate donor shortage in the country.

Sue Rabbit believes that it’s about time that a pilot scheme was introduced for ‘paid provision’ of live kidneys under the strict guidelines of access and equity owing to the fact that the rate of kidney donors from dead and living patients are not keeping pace with the need for the organs.

“One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now.

“But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average anuual income in the UK, currently at £28,000, it would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans.

“So it’s time to explore how to pilot paid provision of live kidneys in the UK.

“We need to extend our thinking beyond opt-in and opt-out to looking at how we can make it possible for those who wish to do so to express their autonomy in the same way as current donors are encouraged to do by making available a healthy kidney for a fee that is not exploitative”, wrote Sue Rabbit in a Personal View article published in the British Medical journal Website.