Gregory E. Pence

About the author: Gregory E. Pence is a professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the author of Re-Creating Medicine: Ethical Issues at the Frontier of Medicine and Classic Cases in Medical Ethics.

Under a 1984 federal law, it is illegal for hospitals, or anyone else, to offer financial incentives to people to donate their organs. This law is intended to safeguard medical ethics, but it is actually unethical for the medical community to ignore approaches that could alleviate the current organ shortage. Compensation for organ donation need not mean the unrestricted sale of human body parts. Instead, the government could implement a well-regulated system in which living donors receive payment for a kidney or other nonvital organ. Also, the families of...