Regulated market of Organ Sales

Pope John Paul II has stated that acts of selfless love "are most solemn celebrations of the Gospel of life" and that a particularly praiseworthy example of such love "is the donation of organs, performed in an ethically acceptable manner, with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who sometimes have no other hope." Evangelium Vitae [1995] ¶86

The National Catholic Bioethics Center strongly opposes any regulated market of organ sales. Such a scheme would harm the charitable nature of organ donation and substitute in its place a market for the buying and selling of human body parts. The human body is not a commodity, but a gift over which God has given us a limited stewardship. Furthermore, to turn the body and its organs into commodities places at great risk those who are poor and vulnerable by making them susceptible to the allure of monetary gain from a surgical procedure which in no way benefits them medically.