$5,000

Is the number being proposed as a financial incentive to donate the organs of deceased family members.

I'll write more on this later, after I've had the chance to think about the issue some more, but my intial reaction is quite negative.

I understand that there is a critical need for donated organs in this country, and I absolutely support efforts to a) convince more people to donate organs and b) develop alternatives to human organ donation (genetically modified animals bred for organ harvesting, therapeutic cloning, stem cell research).

However, there is something deeply disturbing about putting a price tag on someone's internal organs- not for some abstract philosophical reason, but for the very concrete reason that people do vile and horrible things for money.

Maybe I'm being an alarmist, but the idea of someone killing their spouse for five grand does not seem incredibly far-fetched to me.

Of course, that rather small possibility would probably mean a lot less to me if I or someone I loved needed a liver.

There's just not a simple answer to this one, and now it's going to bother me...