Now pending before the New Hampshire legislature is House Bill 1482, “An act relative to the sale of human blood and organs.” If passed into law, the bill would allow for the unregulated private sale of organs between individuals within the state. Specifically, the bill would prohibit the state of New Hampshire from regulating, in any way, “the private sale, purchase, use, possession, or donation of … organs in the state” and, further, that “no rule shall apply to the private sale … of organs.”
Alex Glazier, President and CEO, testified recently against the bill and authored an op-ed piece in the Manchester Union Leader. In the op-ed, Ms. Glazier presented many reasons why the bill would endanger the health and safety of both organ recipients and living organ donors.
“A “rules-free” market system for deceased donors and living donor organs may not be bound by any of the health and safety regulations that are now an integral part of the process. In such a scheme, even the most common-sense regulations could be prohibited by the proposed legislation. The transplantation of a “bought-and-paid” organ may not even be bound by minimal medical requirements for disease screening or be required to be performed by a trained and licensed transplant surgeon.
Such sales hold the real potential for the physical exploitation of vulnerable individuals who may be coerced into selling their body parts to address financial hardship. This will open New Hampshire’s doors to a perverse market where the most financially susceptible among us become commodities, their desperation leveraged by those with the means to pay high prices who would gain preferential access to life-saving transplant.”
In contrast, New England Donor Services supports New Hampshire House Bill 1155 which seeks to remove barriers to living donation by prohibiting discrimination by life insurance companies against those who are living donors.