Scottish academic encourages selling kidneys to pay off student loan debt

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Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

It is no secret that student loans are treated as exceptional by the financial industry and governments. You cannot get out of your student loan debts through bankruptcy, unlike every other type of loan. Similarly, unlike other types of loans, those avoiding payments might find themselves looking down the barrel of automatic weapons brandished by a SWAT team. You might even find yourself in this situation if your estranged wife fails to pay up to the education mafia.

To make matters even worse for Americans, recently the Supreme Court decided that you do not necessarily have a right to a lawyer when being charged with failure to pay debts. Instead, you will very likely be carted off to debtor’s prison without free legal counsel.

Luckily, a brilliant Scottish academic has solved these problems! Worried about being thrown in debtor’s prison, or never being able to get out of a student loan that never paid off in any appreciable way anyways? Why not just sell one of your organs?

Sue Rabbitt Roff of the Dundee University has been campaigning for the legalization of organ sales in the UK. Currently, under the Human Tissue Act of 2004, it is illegal to buy and sell organs and tissues in the United Kingdom.

Roff, a senior research fellow at Dundee University’s Department of Medical Sociology argues that we should allow students “to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs”.  I guess Roff has never weighed the possibility of restructuring the entire way student loans are issued or the concept of student loans themselves.

Instead of thinking about how we can alleviate the ridiculous debt burden placed on students attempting to get a now all-but-worthless college degree, Roff is advocating the legalization of organ harvesting. Personally, I would find this laughable if it was not so disturbing.

I think it is a clear indication something is horribly wrong with our society when giving up vital organs for cash is actually considered a viable way of paying off banking cartels.

What is even more disturbing than Roff’s advocacy of organ harvesting for cash is the fact that Roff’s statements were published in an article in the British Medical Journal.

To play devil’s advocate Roff writes, “One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now. But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average annual income in the UK, currently about [28,000 GBP], it would be an incentive across most income levels.”

Honestly, I do not see that as a viable answer, given the fact that the poor are affected much more by the burden of debt than the rich. Why would a rich person, or anyone with a decent, steady income, opt to undergo a life-threatening surgery in order to pay off debt? I find it hard to believe that just because the standard price is the average annual income in the UK it will be utilized by people across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Does Roff really think that someone would sell their kidney to make a down payment on a Ferrari?

Thankfully, not everyone in the UK is as woefully deluded as Roff.

Dr. Callum MacKeller, the director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics said, “To place a financial value on human beings or parts of human beings undermines the inherent dignity of the human person and the innate as well as immeasurable worth of all individuals.

I couldn’t agree more. Putting the price of 28,000 pounds on a kidney also implies that if the person dies during the procedure, their life was only worth that 28,000 pounds.

Despite the insanity of Roff’s suggestions, she does not think it is particularly controversial to advocate carving up the poor who can’t afford to pay off the costs of their education.

Roff aptly points out how imbecilic her conjecture that it would not exploit the poor by saying, “I don’t feel the need or the pressure for money. I’m a middle-class person and I’m not in that situation. But we shouldn’t legislate for other people.”

Maybe Roff would also advocate the ability for people to get money in exchange for being hunted like animals or tortured? Why not? If there is a market and people need money, who are we to legislate for them?

This line of logic can extend into the most absurdist realms imaginable. Why not legalize cannibalism? If I want to sell my leg to someone so they can cook it up and eat it, who are we to legislate against it? Why not legalize child prostitution? If the child needs the money, who are we to legislate against it?

The insanity of Roff’s logic just gets more unbelievable, “Isn’t it very patronizing for those of us who are well-off to make decisions for those of us who are not? People must be allowed to make their own decisions.”

I would hope that Roff also supports the legalization of prostitution, all drugs, drug dealing and manufacturing, and the ability to sell family members and children into slavery. After all, wouldn’t it be patronizing to tell a poor family that they cannot sell their young daughter into sexual slavery? Wouldn’t it be patronizing for the well-off citizens to stop an impoverished individual from producing meth in order to pay the bills?

If Roff’s idiocy could not be clearer, she also adds that while she would support her two adult daughters if they wanted to sell their kidneys “for the right reasons,” she would likely just give them some money so they were not forced to do so.

I guess then the poor of the world who do not have the money to pay for their children’s debts will just have to suck it up and have their kidney removed for a few thousand pounds. After all, who are we to say what another person can and can’t do, “people must be allowed to make their own decisions,” even if that entails selling your organs to pay off a student loan.