[The costs of altruism in organ donation case analysis]

Three main assumptions were considered for the structure of donation programs during the decade of the sixties: the first states that people, through altruism, would feel committed with the affected and therefore incentivized to donate. The second one states that the human body can not be valued in mercantile terms; therefore organ donation should not be done free of any charges. The last one states donation does not represent any type of harm or damage for the donor. Today, more tan four decades away from their instauration, these three assumptions have been violated and modified due to the way in which they were socialized through the donation protocols. Altruism did not seem to be as generalized as expected, and organ commerce has already gone beyond the legislative frameworks that intended to prevent it; one example is the case of India. In this paper we analyze--through two objectives--the repercussions and impact that took effect in four cases registered in the National Institute of Cardiology (Instituto Nacional de Cardiología) "Ignacio Chávez" in Mexico City. First objective: to describe the economical costs that the altruism-based donation protocol caused on the participant families. Second objective: to reflect on other costs that affected donators due to organ donation. It was found on the reviewed cases that repercussions can go beyond the economical issues; labor related, emotional and ethical repercussions were found too due to a undeniable sensation of reification that donors experience in view of the mechanization of the study protocol they undergo, specially when results are not the optimum. We circumscribe this paper’s analysis to living donors.