AMA looks at paying donors for organs

Most people who donate organs after death need no reward beyond altruism, but others could use a little nudge, according to the nation’s doctors....

That’s why the AMA has waded into the controversial waters of offering financial incentives for cadaver organ donations, a proposition that can’t even be examined without modifying the National Organ Transplantation Act....

The federal law is aimed at preventing human organs from becoming a commodity, of course, said Dr. Gerald Wilson, a South Carolina surgeon and member of the AMA delegation that introduced the issue.

This is disturbing, not because I do not want all the people waiting for transplants to get organs, but because I worry about what a financial incentive for organs would do to the declining respect for human life.  If I have said it once, I have said it a million times, once we exploit one member of our species for parts, then the rest of us will follow. If human embryos are commodities, then we, and consequently our organs, become commodities as well.