BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL STORY CAUSES OUTRAGE AMONG GRADUATES
Cash-strapped university graduates should be free to sell their kidneys in order to pay off their student debt, it has been suggested. And no, this isn’t a joke.
In an article for the British Medical Journal’s website bmj.com, Sue Rabbitt Roff, a researcher at Dundee University, said it was time to “explore” kidney donors being paid £28,000 – the average UK salary – as an “incentive”. She said:
“It would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans.
Mrs Roff, senior research fellow at the university’s Department of Medical Sociology, later told The Scotsman:
“We are allowing young people to undertake £20,000 to £30,000 of university fee payments.
“We allow them to burden themselves with these debts. Why can’t we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?”
It is currently illegal to pay for organs for transplantation under the Human Tissue Act (2004). The act also makes it an offence to attempt to buy or sell organs for transplant. The only country where this is legal is Iran.
Robin Parker, president of NUS Scotland slammed the idea, saying:
“Although the lack of available kidneys for transplant is truly tragic given the need, it’s ludicrous to suggest that selling body parts is a viable solution to alleviating student poverty.
“Young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, are already being asked to take on huge debt to afford an education. They shouldn’t be expected to remove a body part as well.”
The British Medical Association (BMA) said it would not support cash being paid for organs. Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA’s medical ethics committee, said:
“Organ donation should be altruistic and based on clinical need. Living kidney donation carries a small but significant health risk.
“Introducing payment could lead to donors feeling compelled to take these risks, contrary to their better judgement, because of their financial situation.”
*Would you donate a kidney to have your student debt wiped?
Or is the idea abhorrent? Are you alarmed by the suggestion that cash-strapped graduates should be viewed as potential organ farms?
Well, maybe if the going rate for a kidney wasn’t the same as the price of a DEGREE then this wouldn’t be such a ridiculous argument. Suddenly, my degree, of the same standard as both of my parents (who graduated in 1981) cost £30,000 compared to their pitiful £0. None of us had a ‘better’ education, but I am going to contribute approximately the same to the UK economy and taxes as they did. It’s just going to cost me £30k to do so. We’ve already set up such a disgraceful moral minefield around gaining a degree that adding the sale of internal organs surprisingly doesn’t degrade it that much further.
I don’t think I’d ever want to sell a kidney but 28K is a lot of money. In my and many other peoples cases that could be the only way they would get on to the property ladder or pay for a masters or phd. I can see how it would be tempting for some people.
I’m not sure if Tanya saw this before I did or not, but, not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I came across this when I was doing some research for an article for the Gap Medics website and sent it to Tanya, what really makes me laugh though is the thought that Dr Rabbitt Roff could even contemplate saying such a thing and without a full barrage being turned upon her by angry graduates. HOW DARE these people contemplate such things when the country has stomped all over graduates already and reduced many to a state of utter destitution!! I mean really, where are they at? It just shows the complete contempt that high earning figures in authority seem to have for graduates these days. They’ve stolen the chances of us ever making a decent buck and now they want to steal our organs while we still breathe as well!! Someone lead them all off to the guillotine for blazes sake!