A piece of him, a dash of her, mix it up and you get a new person.

'The sale of human organs should be legalized.'

This topic reminds me of this other quote:

"Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself."

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

Human organs are no more special than the genetic code. Even now scientists can create surprisingly accurate depictions of people by reading their DNA. While this technology is mostly of use in crime fighting, DNA is used, prodded and poked all the time. It is tested on, it is experimented with. Gene-storing centers basically buy and sell gene information to each other. So why not do the same with human organs? After all, in dire situations you are more likely to benefit from somebody else's organ than somebody else's DNA.

But first things first. Is there a need for a legal human organ market? We already have donors, in some countries the donor system is opt-out (meaning if you do not specifically say you do not wish to be a donor, you are a donor by default). So people in need who meet the demands for a donor recipient are already taken care of, in some part. In others, it is opt-in, which makes keeping the supply up a bit more challenging. But let's be honest, who wouldn't opt-in with the current systems, probably wouldn't opt-in with a free market. Naturally you cannot help people in demand if you have an insufficient supply. But short of organ harvesting from living people, a legal donor market won't increase the supply.

Sure, one could imagine that the market would encompass the world, whereas the donor program generally only works between countries relatively close to one another. The problem with long-distance organ donorship is transportation and storage. Getting a heart or a lung to a destination thousands of kilometres away without critical deterioration is tricky. It is expensive and extremely time-sensitive. Getting it to work with even longer distances is even more problematic and more dangerous. Simply put, getting the market to go world-wide would be quite a daunting task, and a very possibly impractical one at that. That means the supply won't increase anyways.

Quite frankly, the only legal way this new open market would increase supply is if the donors were to be reimbursed for their generous contributions. In other words, people would have to sell their dying bodies for spare parts. Even if we manage to keep it on the level, are we as a society ready for that? For argument's sake let's say we are. But even so, is gaining a marginally larger supply of donors worth the painful transition phase from a voluntary donorship policy to a capitalism-based one, and do we lose a bit of our souls doing it? Or are good deeds indeed good regardless of motivation and intent?