OUR bodies are composed of various chemicals. Seventy five per cent of body weight is water, and most of the rest is protein, carbohydrate and fat. If you separated out the various chemicals in your body - and sold them, how much would you get? No more than a few pounds.
On the other hand, if you make a list of your various organs and put a realistic price tag on each, to be sold as living healthy parts for transplantation, you will find that you are worth a fortune.
Of course, there isn't much point in getting excited about this. For a start, it isn't legal to sell bits of yourself in this manner. Secondly, even if it was legal, you would have to carefully evaluate how much you would miss the sold organ. For example, you would miss your heart straight away (it would be wise here to demand payment well in advance).
You might reckon you could spare an eye, but you must remember that you will then lose perception of depth. You have two kidneys, so you might spare one, but you must be mighty careful with the one, that is left, etc. And finally, and on a more serious note, there is the whole question of the ethics of trading body parts on the commercial market.
Human organ transplantation has now become such a routine procedure that it is easy to forget it is quite a recent development. The first transplant of a human organ, a kidney, was done in 1951. The first human liver transplant was done in 1953, heart in 1967, and lung in 1981. For many years the main problem with human transplant operations was that the recipient's immune system would quickly reject the foreign organ.
In the early 1980s a new drug, cyclosporin, was introduced which delays the rejection response for months or years, allowing the transplanted organ to become firmly established. Transplantation now became a growth industry.
Ireland puts in a very good performance in the field of organ transplantation. It has the second largest number of kidney transplantations per head of population per annum in Europe. Spain has the largest number of kidney transplantations per head of population, and Austria comes third in this league.
In theory there is no shortage of organs available for transplantation. You can carry a card in your wallet stating that, in the event of a fatal accident, you are willing to have organs and tissues donated to suitable recipients. However, when the time comes, it may be the fervent intention of your next of kin that no organs be removed from your body.
The medical profession will not oppose the wishes of the next of kin, and for understandable reasons. Nobody wants to appear to be a heartless reaper of organs. And so, there is a shortage of organs for transplantation.
Potential organ recipients are much more likely to die from the lack of available organs than they are from the transplant procedure itself. For example, in the US 30 per cent of candidates waiting for heart and liver transplants die before a suitable organ becomes available.
On the other hand, the great majority of cadavers suitable for "recycling" is never used for this purpose - fatal accident victims, etc. The acute shortage of organs is now prompting commentators to ask - "has the time come for a legal market for human spare parts?"
The current situation is that you can agree that, should you suffer a fatal accident, your organs and tissues may be transplanted into suitable recipients. The medical community frowns on the idea of a donor specifying who will receive his/her organs after he/she dies. It is possible for a donor to give some organs while he/she is still alive.
For example, a donor can part with one kidney without noticeable detriment. However, such donations are not encouraged to recipients other than the donor's family. I believe it is also acceptable for living donors to donate such organs to non blood relatives, to whom they are "emotionally related", under conditions that clearly preclude financial considerations.
At the moment you are not legally entitled to sell your body organs, although there may be some flexibility regarding the selling of body fluids, i.e. blood, semen, and milk, under strictly controlled conditions. (There may be no law preventing you from selling saliva, tears or urine, although you will have difficulty finding a purchaser.)
If a legal market was opened up for human "spare parts", it would presumably solve the organ shortage problem. However, certain fairly obvious problems would also arise. One such problem would be social inequity. The majority of donors would probably be lower income people prepared to sacrifice an organ for much needed cash. On the other hand, most recipients would be higher income people.
Of course, this would just be another opportunity for well off people to purchase goods and services that poorer people cannot afford. This already happens and will continue as long as medicine remains a commodity for sale to competing consumers with mixed abilities to pay.
It does seem a bit ironic that, under present arrangements, neither the organ donor nor his/her relatives get any monetary benefit. Everyone else involved gets a benefit. The recipient gets a new working healthy organ. The doctor who performs the operation gets a considerable fee, and the hospital applies its standard charges.
Considerations here can reach comic dimensions. For example, a surgeon in Massachusetts in the 1970s fought an open campaign against a state law that required motor cyclists to wear helmets. He argued that this law would seriously hamper his booming transplant practice.
Indeed, whatever about ethical problems associated with commercialising the practice of donating organs, organ transplantation as at present practised presents some unique ethical dilemmas. For example, should alcoholics be allowed the same access to livers as non drinkers? Should heavy smokers be allowed the same access to hearts or lungs as non smokers? One third of people who receive transplantations go on to receive more than one transplant. Some receive many - should this be allowed?
DIFFICULT issues abound. There was the case of a teenager whose girlfriend had a very serious heart problem. He requested that, in the event of his death, his heart be donated to his girlfriend. Shortly afterwards he died - suicide was strongly suspected. His heart was successfully transplanted to the girl.
Although organ transplantation has now become a relatively routine matter, the problem of long term chronic rejection of the donated organ still remains. However, progress is being made in this area with the development of new drugs and more accurate tissue matching. The average "life" of a transplanted kidney is now 10 years, before rejection sets in.
Many kidneys last longer than average. There is currently one example in Ireland where a transplanted kidney is still going strong 25 years after the operation. Of course, in the case of the kidney, if the transplanted organ fails, the person can go back on dialysis while awaiting the availability of another kidney for transplantation. Various aspects of the area of organ transplantation are discussed in the book, Spare Parts by R.C. Fox and J.P. Swazie (Oxford University Press).
And finally, on a somewhat different note, Irish medical schools are suffering from a shortage of human cadavers. These cadavers are essential for teaching human anatomy to medical students. The cadavers are also of great use to surgeons, who occasionally need to try out a novel but urgently required surgical procedure before using it on a living patient.
Anyone who wishes to further develop an intention to donate his/her body after death to this worthy cause should make inquiries at the anatomy department of the local medical school.