[Avodah] Is there any issur here al pi halacha? - New York man pleads guilty to selling Israeli human organs

[Micha Berger]

Found on aish.com, a quote from R' Yaakov Weiner, "Ye Shall Surely Heal:
medical ethics from a Halachic perspective", pg 155, J-m Ctr for Research,
1995:
    One may sell his organs to save a life, if it causes no halachic risk
    to the donor's life. This would not be subject to the prohibition of
    injuring oneself, because selling the organ is seen as a great need to
    save life and also because saving a life is a mitzvah which suspends
    all others. If however a lifesaving situation does not obtain, for
    example, selling organs to a bank or for research purposes, then doing
    so is prohibited. But if the motivation for his selling the organ
    could be defined as a great need (e.g., avoiding bankruptcy with its
    accompanying legal and social repercussions), it would be permitted.

IM CM 1:103 permits selling one's blood.

Admittedly this is not the same case as our question. However, it would
seem to me that if getting paid is itself not a problem, the only question
would be how the sellers were recruited. Did anyone get pressured into
the sale? Were the barred from more common avenues of receiving tzedaqah?

In the sting operation, the broker currently in the news asked for
$160,000 profit on a kidney for which the seller (a poor Jew in a
financial crisis) only made $10,000.

The above also doesn't deal with the poor person who dies once the
recipient market is shifted to the wealthy.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
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