Should We Legalise Organ Trafficking

Organ transplantation is one of the chief glories of modern medicine. But it’s a miracle tragically out of reach for many thousands of people whose lives might be saved. There just aren’t enough organs to go around. Thousands of transplant candidates might be saved if more people signed organ donation cards, if more families consented to donation of their loved ones’ organs, and if medical personnel approached the families of potential donors more often. But the supply of organs has been disappointingly flat. Organ trafficking is not new to the world and India is considered to be one of the biggest centers.

There is a huge gap between the demand and supply of organs worldwide and this leads to blackmarketing of human organs. Whenever one law is broken, there will be a series of illegal activities such as exploitation of recipient and donor, human rights violations etc. The rich people are ready to pay huge sum of money to save their lives, and there is a set of donors that donate exclusively for the sake of money, or are forced to donate the organ. In last year’s report, World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that ten per cent of all transplants involved patients from developed countries who came to poor countries to buy organs.

HUMAN ORGANS Transplant Act was enacted in 1994, in India and it put some curbs on the commercial trading of kidneys. However, the rotten side of organ trafficking resurfaced in 1998 after the discovery of organised rackets in Noida and Karnataka. Organ trading needs to be legalized with adequate control to prevent such rackets from taking place and poor people from becoming victims.