The recent issue on organ sale brought about by Nuerologist Dr. Lee Wai Ling most certainly sparked off a fruitful discussion and was indeed an eye opener for many. For one, we know of another prove of Singaporeans being kia su ( scared to lose ) and kia si ( scared to die ). From the Sunday Times article dated 4th February by Ms Melissa Low and Mr Vincent Leow in which they conducted a survey on whether Singaporeans would like to buy/sell organs if it was legalised. From the response, it was clear that Singaporeans would only want to buy and not sell organs. Indeed, we are telling the world what a fine country we are.

However, for my own personal view, there are more reasons for Singapore not allowing the sale of organs to be legalised apart from things like health reasons and ethical issues as brought up by the Ministry of Health. I feel that another reasons based on my own view is that because of the many countries who have not legalised it, noting countries like United States and China. Singapore, on record, has not objected or choose to differ from the United States in every UN convention that the two countries took part in. It is therefore understandable that Singapore does not want to legalise the sale due to the fear of antagonism of other countries.

Furtheremore, this further brings out the maturity of our society at large. Singapore is still a traditional and conservative country trying its very best to adjust to the culture of western countries. As such, it is also understandable why we would not permit the sale of human organs. In the status quo, many luxuries can already be bought using money. My opinion is that if we do legalise the sale of human organs, we will be putting a price tag on our organs. How can we then say that our body is sacred and that everyone's equal when there are different prices for each of our organs?

At the end of the day, however, I strongly feel for the government. Seeing it from their point of view, it is really hard to balance the need of safety precautions and saving more lives versus antangonism and level of acceptance of the society. In this aspect, my sympathy goes out to the government and I still feel that they made the right the decision by putting safety and ethics at the forefront of their priorities.