http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/why-selling-kidneys-should-be-legal.html?_r=1

Why Selling Kidneys Should Be Legal
By ALEXANDER BERGER

On Thursday, I will donate one of my kidneys to someone I've never met. Most people think this sounds like an over-the-top personal sacrifice. But the procedure is safe and relatively painless. I will spend three days in the hospital and return to work within a month. I am 21, but even for someone decades older, the risk of death during surgery is about 1 in 3,000. My remaining kidney will grow to take up the slack of the one that has been removed, so I'll be able do everything I can do now. And I'll have given someone, on average, 10 more years of life, years free of the painful and debilitating burden of dialysis.

If kidney donation is this easy, why do the stereotypes about heroic sacrifice persist? Part of the problem is history: before modern medical advances, organ donation used to be quite painful and dangerous. But organ donation advocates also deserve some of the blame. In a misguided attempt to make the families of brain-dead patients consent to the posthumous donation of their organs, advocates treat donors like saints. But deifying donors only serves to make not donating seem normal. When I first told some friends and family that I wanted to donate a kidney, they assumed I'd gone off my rocker. They saw it as a crazy act of self-sacrifice, rather than what it is — one of the many ways a reasonably altruistic person can help others.

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