We have an excellent understanding of the value of a sheep kidney, at least for the purposes of devilled kidneys for breakfast. A delicious spicy dish that is so tasty it has to be bad for you. We do not, however have a value of a human kidney for the purposes of putting inside someone who does happen to have a working one at the moment.

"Trading in human organs is not a butcher shop type activity, or at least it shouldn't be" I hear you say, well some of you anyway, and The Green Man agrees, however it does not mean that a human kidney does not have a value. Today, sadly, everything must have a monetary value to be important and you will be interested to know that the value of a human kidney is US$90,000. This is according to Mark Schnitzler, an assistant professor of health administration at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Not being one to get too bogged down in this ethics stuff he set up an mathematical model to work out the value of a kidney taking into consideration the saving in costs of medical treatment for the recipient and their increased quality of life. They concluded,

For the recipient of a living, unrelated donor kidney transplant, the estimated medical expense for 20 years following transplant is $277,600. The expected medical cost for a dialysis patient for that long is $372,179.

The difference of $94,579 is the expected savings that would be generated by a living, unrelated donor that could be paid to the donor without increasing costs.

This does not even take into account the value of the improved quality of life of the recipient. If you factor that in, the value of the kidney rises to US$176,000.

There are currently 55,000 US citizens waiting for a kidney donor and altruistic kind are pretty few and far between. Hence Dr Schnitzler's journey into the ethical minefield of exploring the possibility of paying for kidneys.

It is easy to jump up and down and get emotional about this but the reality of the situation is that it does little or no harm to the donor to donate a kidney and there a lot of people for whom $90,000 could improve and extend their lives. Given it does no harm how is it different from being paid for your hair by a wig maker?

Read more here.