"SHANGHAI should legislate on organ transplants" it was reported last week in all media.

"Organ donations must be voluntary. Both donor and recipient should receive respect and be able to keep the transplant private. Trading of organs is not allowed. Any organization or person will be seriously punished if involved in or profiting from the organ business," a Shanghai Government spokesman was quoted as saying.

Really?

"It's my life," so the song goes and, with a variant, "They are my organs and if I want to sell them so somebody's life can be saved or made more bearable, then that is my business."

Of course, it is fashionable to follow Western legislation and consider the trading of organs a sacred cow.

Unfortunately, without a monetary incentive, potential beneficiaries would continue to die by the thousands as the shortage of transplant organs is very acute all over the world and not least in China.

What can be so immoral for people to be financially rewarded for parting with an organ they may be able to do without such as a kidney, part of the liver, or tissues like bone marrow, stem cells, sperm or whatever.

What can be so immoral about paying willing parties for organs and tissues harvested from a corpse if thereby the supply increases and more lives can be saved or the quality of life improved.

What can be so immoral about a rural migrant who is slaving away on a building site in Shanghai for 20 yuan a day (less than US$3.00) selling one of his kidneys for US$5,000 or more, enabling him to start his own business.

Medically, one can get by on one kidney for a lifetime.

What can be so immoral about someone who has died and who has willed his tissues for sale so that his family can benefit after his demise? They can pay off that mortgage, renovate the house, buy that car or start that business.

Controversial? It sure is.

But are we not set in our stodgy old ways in that a dead human body is sacred and must be submitted to the flames of incineration or soil bugs in the ground.

Is it not much more fitting to offer someone the gift of life, for some consideration, if it helps, as an incentive.

Is it not ludicrous that a sensible avenue for an increase of the supply of needed organs is denied for "ethical" reasons.

Sure, we have all heard the tired arguments about the possibility of people being keeled over for their organs by criminal elements. Naturally, proper certification and watertight procedures need to be in place. Not an insurmountable problem methinks.

Chairman Mao Zedong, I am happy to report, put paid to religious superstitions in China and this makes it so much easier for China to take a pragmatic approach without having to heed tiresome arguments from the religious powers that be.

Could it that China will, for a change, not follow the rest of the world and instead draft some trail-blazing legislation that will increase the supply of organs and tissue for the betterment of countless suffering Chinese, thereby providing the opportunity of a life for many, to put paid to the vicious poverty cycle.

A "win-win" situation if ever there was one.

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