The growth rate of inbound tourism to India could double in the next 5 years according to the Financial Express (http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=117254), and this is partly due to people travelling to India for medical treatments.

The Common Dreams News Centre (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0601-04.htm) reports that in Canada, people can wait up to 5 years for a kidney transplant.  Some of these people are now travelling to China, India or the Phillipines and paying between $US5,000 and $US145,000 for the operation.

The buying and selling of human organs (and perhaps travelling to that country for the operation) is bound in legal, moral and ethical issues.  Stephanie Murphy (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/murphy-s2.html) lists eight ethical objections to the idea, then tells you why these objections are wrong. Stephanie says that “although poor people would probably be the most likely to sell their organs, an organ market would not be exploitative – in fact, it would help poor people by increasing the amount of options they have for money making”.  Rich westerners offering poor developing country people large amounts of money for their body parts because they cant get them, or have to wait too long for them, at home, sounds a bit unfair to me. Unfair = exploitation.

This is, to me, not a black and white issue. I  certainly want the poeple I love, and myself, to live a long and healthy life, but to have this at the expense of some poor guy in the Phillipines that I dont know having a very painful and high risk operation (ie. kidney removal)…I’m just not comfortable with the idea.

Doc Martin.

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