Thursday, November 12, 2009

Morality of buying kidneys (and brokering them)

Robby Berman, the founder and director of the Halachic Organ Donor Society (www.hods.org ), has an opinion piece in today's YNet: Buying kidneys is moral

It begins:
"I am responsible for the needless deaths of more than 100 Jews. All were victims of kidney disease, literally and figuratively dying on dialysis. They pleaded with me to introduce them to people willing to sell their kidneys, and I refused to do so because it is illegal.
If media reports are true, however, Sammy Shem-Tov and Dimitry Orenstein of Jerusalem did work as a kidney shadchanim (matchmakers) - saving hundreds of lives. Their motives weren’t pure. It took lots of money to get them to break the law and risk prison. So who acted morally and who did not? To me the answer is obvious. They are heroes even if they became wealthy in the process. "

It goes on to make some arguments related to repugnance.

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