Keep Your Hands Off Our Kidneys

In another step towards deterring transplant tourism, the UK government has placed a ban on private organ transplants, essentially closing the door for foreigners to receive cadaver organ donations in the UK.

The British government said Friday that it plans to ban private organ transplants from dead donors to allay fears that prospective recipients can buy their way to the front of the line.

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organs donated within the state-run National Health Service should stay within the public health system.

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While I found no evidence of wrongdoing in the way organs are allocated to patients, there is a perception that private payments may unfairly influence access to transplant, so they must be banned

The UK is the latest nation to take an extreme stance on its organ donation policy. In a sense, the battlegrounds on how donated organs are being allocated are slowly being drawn up, with different countries taking different sides on the issue of who gets to live and who does't.

The UK has taken a “what's ours is ours” policy, disallowing foreigners to access of UK donated organs, while Singapore announced late last year that it is allowing compensation for kidney transplants, passing legislation that declared reimbursement for kidney donation was acceptable as long as it is not "an undue inducement, nor amounting to organ trading"

Then you have those in the gray area, such as in the case of the Philippines, where organ transplants is regulated by the government. In their case, not only does the government ban foreigners from receiving organs from Filipino citizens, it has also disallowed any sort of organ donation between two individuals unless they are related.

Whichever way you look at it, governments are trying to make decisions on behalf of their citizens believing that what they think is for the betterment of their constituents. But is this really so?

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