Legalizing SoHO Donations

SoHO stands for “substances of human origin” – simply put, it refers to human organs, blood and tissues. While one can donate any of these in India, it is illegal to be paid for it. The reason behind the law making it illegal for money to change hands for such transactions was to prevent desperate folks from making donations for money, without fully understanding the risks.

 

Pranay Kotasthane pointed out another aspect of SoHO in India – 80% of living organ donations are by women; and 80% of recipients are men. This would seem to be because of our societal bias with women probably being pressurized to donate organs for their male relatives in need.

 

Does this ban on payments for SoHO have any negative consequence? First, there is a shortage of SoHO in India – one estimate says around 12,000 people die daily because of blood shortage. Inevitably, SoHO-for-cash systems have arisen – they are, of course, illegal. How many people could get blood had the law not been there? Blood transfusion apart, platelets transfusion is another shortage that may be created due to this law – platelets are needed a lot when diseases like dengue spread, a periodic occurrence in India.

 

Another reason many advocate repealing this ban law is that income levels have risen since the 90’s when the law was framed. The number of people at that level of desperation must have lowered, some argue. Additionally, the new medical and tech advances today can make the donation process safe, both for the donor and the recipient.

 

Oh, that highly skewed donor-donee sex ratio we saw above? What if that is not entirely a gender exploitation problem? What if part of it is because men get paid when they donate, i.e., what if the men who donate do it illegally? If that were the case, the male donations would never show up in the official statistics. Is the ban law also skewing the data that is collected?

 

Yet another example of the problem of unintended consequences of laws. And a reminder why we should pause a bit before we curse all our legislators all the time – after all, this law wasn’t passed to win votes; it was almost certainly framed with good intentions. Our legislators deserve a lot of the abuse they get, but it might help if we remember they don’t always deserve it.

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