When I ask this question, people cringe, their faces turn to disgust and avoidance. Why do we see human organs so different than any other product that can be sold and bought?

The problem begins with our perception on economic exchanges in general. We see capitalism as dirty, we see selling stuff as a job for scammers, manipulators, bad people. We have a bad feeling when economics/profit enter the room.

In the case of organs the problem begins with slavery.

We fear that by allowing a price to be put on a heart, a lung or a kidney we open the door to slavery. If you can sell a kidney why can't you sell a human? This is the moral problem, but it gets resolved quickly if you define ownership of one's body.

Let's define "Own : of, relating to, or belonging to oneself or itself (usually used after a possessive to emphasize the idea of ownership, interest, or relation conveyed by the possessive)"

So in order to own something you must have total control of owned thing. You can do that with a chair, with a house, with a human. Now the catch is, can a human be owned by another one, well no. You can't own another body while he is alive. You can only ask him to do what you want or force him, you can't own him.

So the only one that can own a human is the one inside the body. You own yourself, as I own myself. We cannot transfer ownership over the body while we are alive.

You can however "sell" yourself after you die. If you decide while alive to sell your body after you die, we don't see that as a huge moral problem. A lot of people did that for scientific purposes. They "donated" their body because getting money for their children, etc. would be horrible, better give the body for free. I don't understand why we have this aversion to money and body/body parts. Yet we see ownership being used here, you decide what happens with your body after you die, if you don't specify, the decision is granted to your heir(just like your other owned properties).

Now that we know that we own ourselves, and that we can be the only owners of our body until we die, we can see that you selling a kidney to a stranger is not at all disgraceful or strange.

It is very hard to sell your kidney, you have two, only two. How many people would do that for free? for a stranger. Well if you look at the waiting lists, very few.
By allowing people to sell their organs you can help save so many people from death, people that are willing to pay, but can't, we come between them and say you can't get money and you can't live any more, sorry this is the right thing to do. How is that for a moral challenge?

Of course the next thing in mind is, what about the people that can't pay for organs?

Well like all economic transactions, some can afford it, some can't. It's tragic but you can't say, let's kill those who have the money to buy an organ because we don't have enough for everyone. That is just as cruel and unjust. The only way to solve that is to help people that are developing artificial organs. That technology will make organs a lot more cheaper.

The other thing is, if we let people sell organs, criminals will kidnap and steal organs!

Well actually this will prevent that. As we talked about already, you are the owner. It will be illegal to show up with a kidney in a bag and say i got it from someone. The owner must be there in the hospital, accepting the transaction. The organ stealing is happening right now as desperate people unable to buy organs from the free market, accept the immoral act of buying from the black market. The price of organs is kept artificially high because of these restriction. If there is a demand there will be a supply, we can't change that. The same as prostitution, it is illegal yet it's all around us.

So if we want to help people and reduce the risk of organ stealing, we must allow people to do with their body what they decide, even if that means sell a kidney.

Steem on!