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Articles on Organ donation

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The handling and disposition of human bodies raises all sorts of ethical and legal questions. Jupiterimages/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Is it legal to sell human remains?

The short answer: It’s complicated – and depends, in part, where you live.
Lack of a proper storage and transport medium is a challenge to organ donation in Africa. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Human organs for transplant: 5 steps Africa must take to improve the supply chain

Demand for human organs has surpassed supply. This is leading to serious problems including a flourishing black market for organ trafficking.
Liver transplant surgery. Gabriel Borda / Flickr

Organ donation: whether we opt in or out, research finds it’s the will of our family that matters

Contrary to what we may think, changing people’s default status from non-donor to donor cannot significantly increase organ donation rates — as long as the family is involved in the decision.
A limited supply of donor organs, paired with a massive demand for transplants, has fuelled the global organ trafficking industry, which exploits poor, underprivileged and persecuted members of society as a source of organs to be purchased by wealthy transplant tourists. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Killing prisoners for transplants: Forced organ harvesting in China

China’s industrial-scale organ trafficking practice has been executing prisoners of conscience and using their organs for transplantation for decades. This is known as forced organ harvesting.
Eighty-five per cent of Ontarians support organ donation, but only one-third have opted in under the current system. (Shutterstock)

An opt-out organ donor system could address Canada’s shortage of organs for transplant

Thousands of Canadians are on waiting lists for life-saving organ transplants. An opt-out organ donor system, like the one Nova Scotia is implementing, could reduce avoidable deaths and suffering.
Accepting a donor kidney with a small risk of carrying HIV or hepatitis B or C might be worth thinking about. from www.shutterstock.com

Organs ‘too risky’ to donate may be safer than we think. We crunched the numbers and here’s what we found

Organs from gay men or injecting drug users, often rejected for transplants, could safely be used, so long as donors test negative for infections such as HIV, and hepatitis B and C.
It is currently legal for Canadians to travel abroad and obtain organs from illicit sources. If it gains final approval from the Senate, Bill S-240 will change this. (Shutterstock)

Canada must end complicity in China’s brutal organ trafficking regime

When a Canadian travels to China to receive an organ transplant, a member of a persecuted minority may be killed to provide the organ.

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