THBT Markets for Human Organs Should be Illegal Worldwide
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
People should not be able to sell their organs in any country through a legally sanctioned market, even as a personal decision.
This does not include a potential situation with agreeing to sell off your organs when you die.
Burden of proof is shared, no new arguments in the last round.
Organ: A relatively independent part of the body that carries out one or more special functions. Examples of organs include the eyes, ears, heart, lungs, and liver. (https://www.medicinenet.com/organ/definition.htm)
Secondly, con opens up with a well-intentioned grounding that has a good basis on freedom but had a bad comparison. I will not go deep into pornography but it is commonly said that pornography is addicting and destructive in relationships. The portrayal of women as objects is simply insulting, and the only reason why it is kept is that the implementation of a ban is extraordinarily difficult, not to mention pornography is only bad in overwhelming amounts. On the other hand, banning the organ market is very easy -- every country is already doing it, except Iran. Organ donation is bad no matter how much you donate. For example, even a singular kidney -- perhaps the most expendable organ of the body -- shown in Round 1 was shown to have negative health effects on users. While most porn users would recommend others to at least try to dabble before making a decision, my research shows 80% of people recommend you do not sell your organ off for money. Clearly, this comparison is flawed and falls apart. Extend the fact that the rich will always abuse the poor, and hence this exchange of income is unacceptable.
Con attempts to reduce my power by saying that the demand will drive up the prices but fails to show the impact. Even looking at Iran's increased prices at $5,000 extra dollars per month, the sacrifice of health risks the users going to the hospital and having worsened health. While it is enough to live, it is not enough to break out of poverty, which is what the sellers desired. There is simply not enough benefit to encourage the poor to live in even worse health than they already are living in.
Finally, Con tries to refute the fact that humans' lives are invaluable but he makes an argument about disability. How can we judge someone merely based on their physical attributes? Steven Hawking was paralyzed, but he was one of humanity's greatest minds. Even with physical disabilities, one can make great contributions to society. In addition, his argument refutes itself, because, by his logic, the person with only one kidney would be worth less than the man with two kidneys. So we would end up not participating in the organ market anyway. When we donate our organs, we accept that someone's life can be equally valuable as our own. Our kindness and altruism is the only thing that can match the others' health. It is only when we put a price on it, that sends the erroneous message that our lives can be equal to a certain amount of money. Con tries to equate selling organs to selling hair or donating blood, but neither are incredibly detrimental to health and so the comparison still falls apart.
- Poor people being taken advantage of
- Not enough money to truly help
- Weakened bodies from donating organs
- No difference from the opt-out system
- Devalues the human life and body
So, in general, I think this debate went a little off the rails after the first round. For Con, it became more about pointing out things that don't quite jive with Pro's arguments, which just... aren't particularly important. The difference between markets and compensation is never given any salient reason why it factors into the debate. If you want to spend the time rephrasing the debate, then examine how the individual arguments fail to meet that rephrasing. Show why Pro's points stop mattering the moment we redefine markets. Without that, this accomplishes nothing. Similarly, if you want to make the point that hair is an organ (I have problems with both assertions, but let's assume they're true) tell me why that matters. Simply saying "in Pro's world, people can't donate hair" isn't enough. It doesn't tell me why that's terrible. Examine what that loss means. Tell me why it outweighs Pro's points. Don't just stop at "he's being hypocritical" - hypocrisy doesn't have an impact! In general, it felt like Con was just giving up with these points, which is a shame because, unlike the statement in his final round, this is not a Pro-biased topic. It's actually pretty balanced, but you need to make the points that show that.
...So, that just leaves the arguments presented in the first round because Pro doesn't really expand on his points and Con just goes off on these tangents. Con argues that we should have the right to do whatever we want with our body parts because of it's essentially our God-given right to use our bodies to earn some money. That would have been better put if you'd responded to Pro's rebuttals regarding pornography, but in general, I'm just not sure what this means. What do we lose by not having this liberty? You hint at it in the final round - that this is an option that people should have access to if they're desperate enough - but it's never clearly stated, nor is it clear what the alternative world that Pro is arguing for looks like. You get a sliver of impact from vague "liberty", but it doesn't do much. Con also argues that it would be better in the vein of utilitarianism for the poor and infirm to give their organs to people who could use them to do a lot of good, which just generally seems poorly linked to his position because it sounds like he's arguing that we have a moral obligation to GIVE our organs to the rich, rather than that we have a moral obligation to SELL them. I honestly don't know what this does for Con beyond pointing out that more organs on the market means more rich people buying them, which I guess is a point for him, but it's really unclear what the actual impact of that is. Saying "we get utility" isn't very clear.
Meanwhile, while Pro makes some missteps himself, I do have some clear arguments and impacts from him, most of which are either dropped or mishandled. He argues that this won't give the poor a way out of poverty, which is a decent argument, but it's really more prerebuttal than actual offense. It's income. It may not be enough income, but it's income. That's basically granting your opponent offense before he even has a chance to say anything. Human dignity is a better point, though I would have liked a better challenge to the notion Con presents that some lives (particularly poor lives) just don't really matter. Honestly, I kind of expected you to blow up over that. Instead, your response was to say that he was inaccurately representing what value means, which... I mean, it kinda works, but not very well. There's points about a black market and organ sellers who are not actively making the choice, which is the low-hanging fruit of this debate. Generally, exploitation of the poor makes a lot of sense as an argument, it just doesn't get the kind of impact analysis that it really should have here. As for the opt out system... I guess this counters Con's argument that sales are the only way to get numbers of donations up, but I felt like I never really understood how this system works. It never gets rebutted, though, so that alone would nearly be sufficient to beat back Con's case.
I end up voting Pro, largely based on the exploitation arguments, though they are muddier than they should be.
Argument: Pro left a sour taste in this voter's mouth by provision of the first sourced reference, which was apparently from another debate on this site; however, the link failed, and so the citation of the apparent cost of living in India also failed. Separate reference revealed that the cost of living in India is not as Pro suggests; it is virtually half of the suggested $1,000 per month. However, the argument of cost of living, regardless of what it is in India, or anywhere else [Iran is reference also used by Pro] is irrelevant because persons are unable to make a continuous living on the basis of selling organs simply because with the exception of blood, hair, or skin [all of which are human tissue - which Pro incorrectly rejects, while Con successfully argued for their inclusion as human tissue] no organ is self-replenishing, and therefore, only one of even organs which typically exist in pairs, can be sold until the person dies if that person expects to be able to continue use of the other paired organ. Therefore, the argument of economic support for an organ-selling industry does not figure as a sustainable argument. Con successfully rebutted the point, by demonstration that even the selling of self-replenishable organs [blood and hair] provides a viable market of organ selling that is beneficial to those needing organ transplant. Points to Con.
Sources: As if the sour encounter of an inaccessible source link could be ignored, Pro's sources presented unsupportable arguments relative to poverty and market liquidity because of the failed arguments as noted above, and the use of sources, such as Iran, whose economy is not exactly robust in any market, let alone organ-selling. Pro's sources are simply not reliable. Con's sources, by contrast, such as the sourcing of hair and blood offering, while not personally beneficial for sustained personal cost of living concerns by themselves, do contribute to a person's cost of living needs. Points to Con
S&G: tie
Conduct: Pro and Con had relatively equivalent conduct value until in R4, when Pro said, "Con's crux of his argument strongly supports my idea, therefore he has conceded this debate". A fair review of Con's arguments would suggest that in little regard do Con's arguments agree with Pro. Therefore, to suggest that Con has de facto conceded when Con offered no such concession, but rather continued argumentative and rebuttal language demonstrates that Con stayed active in debate in all four rounds. Point to Con.
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>Reported Vote: fauxlaw // Mod action: Removed
>Points Awarded: 0:6 (6 points to CON)
>Reason for Decision: See Comments Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The allocation of the conduct point is not properly justified.
"To award conduct points, the voter must:
(1) identify specific instances of misconduct,
(2) explain how this misconduct was excessive, unfair, or in breach of the debate's rules, and
(3) compare each debater's conduct."
PRO making a rhetorical statement about CON de facto conceding is not an excessive breach in conduct.
The voter may revote if they fix this issue.
Working on this one next. Should be able to get something up sometime this coming week.
I think the fundamental assumption that organ donation can refer to anything that is independent from human body, rather than what Organ donation markets assume are organs (face tissue, kidney, lung, heart...)
Where's the kritik?
Umm I really don't mind you vote pro or con . But serious would you mind to point out some serious spelling mistake or grammatical mistake ?
Umm but the definition should be based on the description only if the description has marked it
I'll get a vote up on this at some stage. Haven't given it enough of a look to answer your question, seldiora.
Nope. I don't play that game. That is a done debate, and buried from my perspective, regardless of outcome. The differentiation of "organ" and "tissue" is somewhat tenuous. As an avid student of human anatomy and the medical profession [my father was a hospital administrator, my mother a medical transcriber, and my older brother is a physician], the linkage of organ and tissue is tight. While I would agree that hair, specifically, is not an organ, it is clearly tissue [living at the root, or follicle, and dead in the exposed length, regardless of length], both heart and skin are organs. Pro clearly dismissed hair as tissue while Con offered it as an example of donated/sold tissue, and skin was my reference; not offered by either Pro or Con.
In any case, I don't know why the linking to the India study failed. Here's the link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195344
what do you think? Did Undefeatable fail, because he didn't put in what the organ donation/transplant market meant? Or is the premise vague enough that we should accept con's definition? I'm on the fence here.
*facepalm* this is what happens when I listen to you and don't put "no kritiks".
are you getting revenge for your systemic racism debate? It seems to me pro used multiple different sites in conjunction to support the idea of what an "organ" is. Why do you accept that the blood and sperm can be the organ? That's confusing to me.
vote if you dare!