Patient in hospital bed (Getty Images)
London, England -- A debate is raging in the United Kingdom over the prospect of allowing students to sell organs for tuition money.
"We allow them to burden themselves with these debts" to attend college, Dined University's Sue Rabbitt Roff wrote in an article published in the British Medical Journal. "Why can't we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?"
Roff is insisting that a ban on selling the organs be overturned. She figures student could get around $46,000 per kidney, roughly the average annual income in the country.
Roff says anther reason she supports the plan is to increase the number of available replacement organs. She cites the fact that three people die every day waiting for a kidney transplant.
She has her critics. "Young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, are already being asked to take on huge debt to afford an education," Robin Parker, president of the National Union of Students in Scotland, told the Scotsman. "They shouldn't be expected to remove a body part as well."
The United States also bans the selling of organs.
"Permitting students to sell their organs to pay off school debt does not make sense," Alexandra K. Glazier, chairwoman of the ethics committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), told CBS News in an email. "Students should not have to lose a body part to pay for education."
Glazier said the donation of an organ represented an altruistic gift. Problem is, statistics suggest that Americans are coming up short in the altruism department.
In the U.S., there are now more than 110,000 people waiting for a heart, lung, kidney, liver, pancreas or intestine, according to UNOS. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department estimates that 18 Americans die every day while waiting for an organ that never becomes available.
CBS News