Medical Services A New Sector Of The Overall Tourism...

Transplant tourism is a new sector of the overall tourism industry. It focuses on an individual’s ability to travel to a place where they have no permanent residence in order to receive medical services, specifically organ transplants. This paper will seek to give some of that foundational knowledge and explore those ethical and moral considerations to further explain the ways in which this field is growing and how/why so many more Canadians appear to be in support of it. Transplant tourism in some countries is an illegal activity while in other countries it is not considered illegal; therefore, the question of how ethical it is comes into play. The organs in question are generally kidneys, because this is among the most common of the†¦show more content†¦This is not something that might otherwise be proposed in â€Å"civilized† society, so the question becomes why anyone would propose it in a society where it is not clear that people know better. When buying organs from a person in another country, the question becomes it is unethical to treat human beings in that country as if they are merely resources for organs, and do people that don’t contribute to the community in which they are receiving services have a right to have such invasive procedures done there? There are numerous reasons why people engage in transplant tourism: lower expenses than what they are charged for an organ transplant in their own country, access to a tr ansplant when their home country might have a wait list, or a better level of skill among the medical staff, some of whom might specialize in a certain type of transplant. There are also questions of regulation, in that some countries have a significantly lower level of regulation for medical procedures like this one when it comes to transplant tourism. Another potential issue is the question of exploitation and how much developing countries are being exploited for their need to generate more economic impact, thus essentially â€Å"selling† the organs of the residents to the highest bidders† (Delmonico, 2009). While there are certainly a number of moral theories that could be applicable in this issue, moral subjectivism may be the most relevant. This is characterized by a sense