User:Kartafilos/sandbox

India
India passed the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA) in 1994, in an attempt to promote posthumous donation of organs and to ban the sale the organs. Despite this law, Indian. Low costs and high availability brought in business from around the globe, and transformed India into one of the largest kidney transplant centers in the world. However, several problems began to surface. In some cases, patients were unaware that a kidney transplant even took place. In other cases, patients were promised payments that were much higher than what they actually received. These and other ethical issues pushed the Indian government to pass legislation banning the sale of organs. Nevertheless, current laws still contain loopholes. For example, the THOA states that an organ donor must be a relative, spouse, or an individual donating for reasons of "affection" for the recipient. Often, claims of "affection" are unfounded and the organ donor has no connection to the recipient. In many cases, the donor may not be Indian or even speak the same language as the recipient.

The Philippines
Before 2008, the sale of organs was legal in the Philippines, and the country was a popular destination for transplant tourism. The Philippine Information Agency, a branch of the government, even promoted "all-inclusive" kidney transplant packages that retailed for roughly $25,000.

The government banned the sale of organs, effective March 2008. Since the ban took effect, the number of transplants has decreased from 1,046 in 2007 to 511 in 2010. Professor Roger Lee Mendoza has suggested that declining numbers of transplant tourists and documented organ sales may serve to strengthen organ black markets. Often, he says, banning organ sales fosters compensation-based contractual systems between underground donors, brokers, and buyers.

Currently, with little incentive to donate an organ, approximately 6,000 people die yearly waiting for a transplant organ. David Holberg has argued that regulating the organ trade could solve the organ shortage and create safer, fair practices for donors. Supporters of regulation argue that by implementing a regulated market system, prices for organs would actually be lower than current black market values, since an increased supply drives prices down. These lowered organ prices could result in a disincentive to engage in black market organ trading, since illegal brokers would have less to gain financially. Additionally, the increased supply would result in shorter waiting periods for transplant recipients, which would in turn reduce hospital costs.

Medical ethics perspective
The debate on the ethics and morality of organ trade remains spirited in modern society. Relevant evidence changes frequently due to the dynamic nature of our technological advancements in medicine and our understanding of ethics itself. Particularly, religion plays a major role in the topic of bodily autonomy as it relates to organ trade. Bodily autonomy is defined as the "ability to make choices about how [one's] body is to be treated by others." Many religious activists and theorists say this idea of bodily autonomy treats the body as property, which violates many religious views that the body and self are one entity. Therefore, from many religious stances, selling a part of your body is analogous to selling your inner self, or soul, which many religious communities regard as a violation of human dignity.