Concern over doctor's kidney selling comments

An ACT specialist has renewed debate about how to overcome the crisis in organ donations by suggesting young healthy people be allowed to sell their kidneys.

Canberra nephrologist Gavin Carney is quoted as saying the Federal Government should allow transplants to go ahead for a fee of $50,000, but transplant organisations are strongly opposed to the move.

Selling or buying organs in Australia is illegal and carries a penalty of six months jail or fines of over $4,000.

Dr Gavin Carney, from the Canberra Hospital, says the country's donation crisis could be solved by allowing payment for transplants.

Dr Carney has told newspapers that young, fit and healthy people should be allowed to sell their kidneys for up to $50,000.

He says it would prevent sick patients from waiting years for transplants and stop them from travelling to Third World countries like Pakistan and India to buy organs, but the move has been condemned by Transplant Australia (TA)

TA chief executive officer Chris Thomas says providing a financial incentive is not the right approach and would leave poor and desperate people vulnerable.

"It really focuses on the poor and people who are least able to pay for things in society get attracted to these types of things and we reject that," he said.

"We'd also be concerned about what's going to happen in the long-term.

"If you accept the fact that poor people are going to look at these types of stories and say 'well, maybe that's for me', they're probably also more likely to suffer from lifestyle diseases later in life and may end up needing a kidney transplant themselves sometime in the future because of our increasing rates of obesity."

Black market dangers

Mr Thomas also warned of the dangers that could confront those who choose to buy black market organs in second countries.

"There are huge risks involved," he said.

"The people who are donating can have HIV, they can have hepatitis, they can have a whole range of different diseases, they may have some underlying cancer in their body.

"This type of disease can be transplanted into a healthy patient as such.

"The person returns to Australia and faces a problem that they never even anticipated.

"We do have a brilliant system in Australia, once we get the organs, once we get the donors to agree."

Kidney Health Australia (KHA), formerly known as the Kidney Foundation, is also against the proposal.

KHA medical director Dr Tim Matthews says the average wait for a kidney transplant in Australia is four years and that each week one person dies while waiting for a transplant.

"I think it's a sign of how desperate things are and in particular how desperate some people feel having waited for a kidney for some years without any result," he said.

Dr Matthews says it is unlikely selling body parts for profit would be supported by Australians.

He says a Federal Government task force has just done a review just of organ donation and made 53 recommendations.

He is optimistic Australia can do better with the current system.

"The state of South Australia has had twice the rate of organ donation than New South Wales has had over the last 10 years," he said.

"There's no reason, no essential reason why New South Wales can't match that."

One in five will lose homes: report

Up to one in five households under mortgage stress will lose their homes, according to new figures.

The findings in the monthly Anatomy of Australian Mortgage Stress to be released on Thursday show that about 20 per cent of people who go "into the slippery slide" of borrowing never get out.

But "once you're in severe stress there's only about a 50-50 chance of getting out," Martin North from Fujitsu Consulting, the firm that compiled the report said.

The firm's previous monthly mortgage stress report indicated an alarming 750,000 Australian households would be under mortgage stress by mid-2008 - with about 300,000 under severe stress.

72 per cent of households blamed interest rates hikes for the mortgage stress this year, up from 14 per cent in 2005.

Mortgage stress has hit young families the hardest with 35 per cent experiencing the pressure.

Quote: "That the old economic order is destroying itself, and taking the whole world towards a replay of the Argentinean crisis on a global scale, is no secret in financial circles. It's just not featured on the 6 o'clock news or the pages of the mass-media newspapers. The following excerpt from the August 12, 2004, edition of the Dow Theory Letters, a financial newsletter by Richard Russell in the USA, captures what the people inside the economic and financial sectors know and accept. It's scary and it's true.

* "... In the end, the US is fated to drown in liabilities, and in the end the dollar will fall to the point where it will no longer be accepted as the world's reserve currency. But until then, the world, really the Asians, will "play the game" in which they will continue to accept and accumulate dollars.

Why are they doing this? they're continuing to accept dollars because this process allows them to continue to sell their products to the US. Yes, it's a game. Yes, it can't go on forever. Yes, the US and the dollar will finally drown in liabilities. Yes, this is ultimately what the bear market is all about. And yes, there really seems to be nothing that will reverse this process."

* "The whole system is obviously doomed, but the world's politicians don't think in terms of "doom." Doom is in the future, and politicians are concerned with "now," and the next election.

There is no need for anyone to overthrow the old order based on capitalism. The societal flaws and lethal memes that are associated with takerism and capitalism are already well on the way to destroying the empires of the industrial age, New knowledge, new technology, and new thinking are helping to accelerate the process. Time is running out for the old order.

Our concern, as leaver-givers, needs to be with the world beyond the demise of capitalism. We need to have a social and economic logic, and a system of transition, in place well before the looming meltdown. We must have the rudiments of a new civilization and a new society ready for people to join when their old world fails them.

This is the most important work and thinking that we can ever do on behalf of our fellow beings."

Lothar,
September, 2004

"Go forward in peace. And always remember the line from Gravity's Rainbow:"

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."


2nd Renaissance - Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States