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7/11/2008
Is there an Inquisition going on?
Tang Wee Sung should have spent a short holiday in the Phillipines. I was watching CNA last night and there was a programme showing trishaw riders in the Phillipines. Several healthy young pedicab drivers were being featured. They were so vibrant, energetic, healthy, and happy.
There have all sold one of their kidneys and are not only happy, but living life normally. And one kidney was sold for US$3,800! For that one of them said he could buy a pedicab to earn a living and also a small store. They all did it for the well being of their families. Who is to say that they are wrong, exploited, suffering? They did it willingly, as a personal sacrifice.
Of course we the rich Singaporeans felt very sorry for their plight. But can we offer them any help except to deprive them of the opportunity to do something for their families? This is the haughtiness of a self centred and self proclaimed morally righteous people. No it is wrong, don't let them do it. Let them continue to live in poverty and indignity, begging for handouts. And let the kidney failure patients die.
These are the honourable and right things to do. And the witch hunt is on.
Maybe the gahmen should allow the sale of blood for starters. The blood bank is always complaining about having not enough blood in its "coffers". If the poor and needy but healthy of course, are able to sell their blood on a regular basis, they would have an avenue to get a form of income.
ReplyDeletepoor people are not allowed to make money. and paying them for it is exploitation. they must be given the freedom to live freely in poverty.
ReplyDeletein the name of the law, i fear.
ReplyDeleteoops, i mean in the name of the lord, i fear
It is a fallacy that selling kidneys help the poor as well as saving lives. People suffering from kidney deseases are not only the rich. When kidneys become a commodity there'll be no donors. Queueing for kidneys is thus made redundant. While the rich can bid for their kidneys, the poor lost that opportunity to ever get theirs.
ReplyDeleteWhile it can save a rich man's life, it deprives the opportunity of the poor.
can we let the market mechanism determine the price and supply and demand?
ReplyDeletelegalising it will not make a sick man looks like a criminal for wanting to pay the market price for a willing buyer to sell his organ.
similarly the willing seller need not become a criminal for selling a part of his body.
Let market mechanism determine its price? What difference? The poor ones will still suffer for not being able to pay for a kidney, as prices will skyrocket.
ReplyDeleteDont forget, committing suicide is a crime, eating the meat of dead people to stay alive in certain situation is also a crime, to incapacitate oneself so as to evade nat. service is a crime too. How can trading in human organ be exceptional?
there are people who want to sell, there are people who want to give for free. everyone has his own reason to want to do things his own way. there will be room for everyone if no one is allowed to impose his values on anyone.
ReplyDeleteHow could an intellectual person like you say that? Human beans being societal creatures will find common values that they agree upon so as to stay in unison. Imagine everyone with his own value and no rules. Are you thinking of the time of the stone age men?
ReplyDelete