AskNadia: Please Do Not Reach Out to Me to Sell Your Organ from a Foreign Country
Dear Nadia,
I am a 34-year-old Nigerian male. Kindly help me; I want to sell one of my kidneys. I am o+positive.
AE
Dear AE:
I am not in the organ brokering business, and I have mixed feeling about your FB message asking me to help you sell your organ.
A few years back, I saw a program on HBO featuring a Turkish and an Israeli physician who discussed their role in selling kidneys in the organ trafficking market. The surgeon, the Turk, saw himself as a skilled physician who could extend patients’ lives. The Israeli, a nephrologist, saw himself as a hero.
Both work in a shady industry where some people’s demands and affluence operate at levels far beyond society’s comfort zone.
Many people consider organ trafficking to be a questionable field.
American and Canadian organ recipients featured in the documentary shared their views on their choice. I’m sure some viewers found them selfish, justifying and rationalizing their desperation. Other viewers may have thought otherwise, seeing the recipients as stakeholders in an emerging new concept for choice that challenges narrow views and demands serious consideration.
Are these physicians and patients pioneers in an industry held back by society’s refusal to recognize a primal need for survival, both physical and economical? For organ recipients, transplants are about living. For organ procurers and sellers, their livelihoods and the ability to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves are often at stake. So what do they have in common? They are concerned about their lives, with the dream of a better life.
Are Organ Traffickers Playing God?
Those considerations aside, are we playing God when we use trafficked organs to extend life? Who decides which medical intervention is ethical and whether it’s morally correct? To add another layer to this topic, a while back, we wrote an article about prisoners on death row and their contribution to this controversial topic, Should States Let Inmates Donate Organs?
I wonder how the donor landscape would appear if prisoners who wanted to donate an organ could do so by giving a single organ, such as a kidney, or all of their organs, provided that their execution didn’t damage those organs.
CRISPR Gene Editing in Human Trials
An emerging industry in the health field is gene editing. CRISPR immunotherapies therapies are currently used in human trials with cancer patients where damaged DNA is edited by cutting a mutant strand from the DNA sequence and replacing it with an engineered sequenced strand to transform the nucleus into a healthy DNA. If the cell cannot repair itself, it dies.
There has been some headway in researching pig organs for human transplants by engineering enzymes to target specific sequences for the desired outcome. What is the possible side effect of the treatment? There is a risk that the targeting may not be exact or cause unknown health risks. We are still about 30 years away from CRISPR transplant treatments.
What do you think? What advice do you have for our 34-year-old Nigerian? I want to know what you think on any of these points on our Facebook.Com/MyDiabetesHealth page. Organs for sale is a highly controversial topic, and I would like everyone to respect other people’s shared opinions. We lose our strength as a community when demonizing people we disagree with.
As the Publisher of Diabetes Health- it is my job to show both sides. We can learn from each other by understanding someone else’s logic. Or not. Everyone lives with contradictions. I have friends who only eat organic foods and can go into a monologue about the food industry but consume more alcohol than I can imagine. Am I better than them because I don’t always buy organic and drink less alcohol? No. I have my contradictions, which I can’t think of right now:)
Disclaimer:
Nadia’s feedback on your question is in no way intended to initiate or replace your healthcare professional’s therapy or advice. Please check in with your medical team to discuss your diabetes management concerns.
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About Nadia:
Nadia is a Diabetes patient advocate. She helps people make informed decisions to avoid the devastating effects of diabetes complications.
AskNadia (ranked #1 by Google), named “Best Diabetes Blog for 2017 & 2019 by Healthline and with 23 nominations, Nadia Al-Samarrie’s efforts have made her stand out as a pioneer and leading patient advocate in the diabetes community.
Nadia was not only born into a family with diabetes but also married into one. She was propelled at a young age into “caretaker mode,” and with her knowledge of the scarcity of resources, support, and understanding for people with diabetes, co-founded Diabetes Interview, now Diabetes Health magazine.
Nadia has been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, and other major cable networks. Her publications, medical supply business, and website have been cited, recognized and published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, Ann Landers advice column, former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, Entrepreneur magazine, Houston News, Phili.com, Brand Week, Drug Topics, and many other media outlets.
