Are organ transplants a good or a bad thing?

An organ transplant is when an organ is moved from one body to another. It has saved
lots of lives, and there are many good things and bad things about organ
transplantation. In this small essay I will list some of the good things and also some of
the issues (all issues e.g. ethical, social, and cultural). Overall despite the numerous
issues with organ transplants I think that they are overall a good thing.

Some people think organ transplants is more of a good force rather than a bad one.
This is bases upon multiple reasons and facts. First of all and most importantly, organ
transplants save people’s lives. We need our (main) organs to stay alive, and organs like
kidneys, from which we have two, we can donate one of our two good functioning
kidneys to someone less fortunate, and save their lives. An organ donor can not only
save one life, but 8 lives if he/she donates an organ. The thought of one person who has
lived their life and saving 8 others is remarkable. The same donor can save or improve
the lives of 50 people by donating tissues or eyes. It even more remarkable that a
donor can save 50 people by donating tissues or eyes. There are not many other good
points apart from the fact that organ transplants saves lots of people’s lives, and gives
them a second chance in life, for example to see how much someone’s life has improved,
online there are lots of success stories.

However despite the amazing thing to save someone’s life, there actually ethical,
religious and cultural arguments against organ transplantation. To start with, let’s look
at organ transplants from human to human. Well first off, for some people donate your
organs after your death might seem unethical. This is because, unlike an atheist some
religions believe in after life, and thus the dissecting of the body and removal of
organs would not seem right to someone like that. On the other hand, major religious
groups such as the three main denomination of Judaism, and Roman Catholic have no
rule against donating organs. Some people say that Judaism prevents the donation of an
organ because religion Judaist states the body should be buried immediately after
death. And if you are to donate an organ it will have to be extracted thus lengthening
the time till burial. However the Judaist authorities have agreed that if the reason for
delayal is to save somebodies life then so be it. Islam also supports organ donation,
most Muslim’s view it either as charitable or required to preserve life. The Buddhist
and Hindu religion both leave the question of whether to donate to the individual,
although yet again both faiths see donating and organ as an admirable act of
compassion to others. Organ transplantation is rare in places like japan for example
because Shinto traditions say that the body, once dead, is impure; also, tradition says
that defiling a corpse brings bad luck to the person who does it. Thus many Shinto’s
oppose the taking of organs from those who have just died, or say they would not want
an organ transplanted from the dead. Finally there is also the Jehovah’s Witness’s
faith, and American faith which forbid the movement of one person blood to another
body. Some people might not wish to sign a donor card because they might feel that it
would upset their family and friends, a very social argument. But still the thought of
saving many (at least one) person’s life after death persuades some people to become
donors. Today more and more people are not against donating organs, or organ
transplantation in general, however there is still not a lot of donors, and therefore a
large shortage of donors around the world. Scientists (and doctors) though one way to
tackle this problem would be to extract organs from animals instead of humans. Animals
such as pigs for instance because their organ size is very similar to the human size (and
animals like gorillas). However ( this is also true with human organ donors) that when
the organ has been transplanted, the cells in your body called white blood cells (cells of
the immune system, which fight against diseases and disorders in the body) fight
against an unknown foreign body, like the organ that has been transplanted. Donation in
family, for example kidney donation has much for probability to work rather than a
stranger’s organ. This is because you and you families DNA is very similar, and if you
look at the DNA of twins you will find it is exactly the same- identical. This means that
an organ transplant will almost definitely work among them. Some people are against
animal organ donation, because (well donation once the animal is dead is very similar to
human transplants, and there is no religious objection) there are a lot of animal lover
and people who care for animals out there, and imagine that scientist’s/doctors need an
organ from an animal but there are no dead animals, lots of people would be against the
murder of an animal for the sake of a human being. That’s saying that our lives are
more important than an animal’s (strictly speaking we are animals, but hopefully you
understand that I mean animals excluding humans) life. There is also a big economic
argument against transplantation which is that organ transplantation is quite expensive.
For example here are some prices for transplants (on average):

 Only heart transplant-around £1000

 Single lung transplant-£550
 Double lung-£800
 Heart and lung-£1200
 Kidney (cheapest)-£260
 Intestine-£1200

Of course, these prices, when you have in mind are the prices for saving someone’s life
are very good, but still cost money and time.

Overall despite all the ethical arguments against organ transplants, I think that the
moving of an organ from one dead body to a living body the save the living body is very
good. And one organ has the capacity to save up to 8 people as previously mentioned and
tissues can save up to 50 people. I think that it way it is very ethical to save
people/people’s life (lives) because it is a very good and unselfish deed.

Pavel Asenov 8a