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Flesh, blood and a few dollars more

by Medindia Content Team on Jul 9 2006 4:07 PM

A pound of flesh and a few dollars more. This might seem sickening, but there are many who bet on their dear ones falling sick and dying and if that happens, they hit the jackpot and become a few million dollars richer. This trading or betting on someone’s life is unabashedly termed 'Life Insurance', a must-have in today’s world.

Life insurance is undoubtedly hope after a hopeless situation and a saving grace to many. Yet, we do hear of sordid stories where overwhelming greed for money, is the motive behind many deaths, and insurance claims thereafter. Now, along with tales of lives lost, a subject that is staking its claim to fame (or notoriety) is the issue of organ transplants. Acute dearth of organs exists despite the many organ donations. Due to the short supply of transplant organs, black markets that support the sale and purchase of organs are thriving, notwithstanding the ban that forbids sale and purchase of human organs. Justifiably, getting hold of a transplant organ is life saving for many who are in dire need of organs and do not get them at the appropriate time. Activists are keen to push the cause of an open market for transplant organs, to augment the short supply of organ donations.

Transplant surgeries have an uplifted status in today’s medical field. Nowadays such surgeries are not considered unsafe, but seem to be the only resort for a new lease of life. The statistics have it that in the year 2005, almost 16,000 kidney transplants were performed in the U.S. The demand for transplant surgeries is only growing higher and higher, and it is estimated that nearly 3500m people annually, are not able to survive the indefinite wait for transplant organs.


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