Why not sell organs?

Lots of reasons, including the harvesting of poor people.


"Dr. Jacob's plan to offer compensation but not follow-up care to foreign vendors of organs was arguably quite damning for the organ sales cause, but it was by no means the only element of the rationale for the ban on valuable consideration. In fact, there was a lively debate about such issues as the potential for exploitation of the poor, the risk of undermining the ethical precepts of medicine, and the moral impropriety of treating parts of the body as commodities."


Staff Discussion Paper, President's Council on Bioethics, Alan Rubenstein, On the Body and Transplantation: Philosophical and Legal Context, 2007, http://www.bioethics.gov