UNDER the Human Organ Transplant Act (Hota) here, it is a criminal offence for any person to 'enter into a contract or arrangement under which a person agrees, for valuable consideration, to the sale or supply of any organ or blood'.

The penalties are a jail term of up to a year, or a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan has said that there was no possibility of legalising organ trading any time soon.

He has argued that such a move raises difficult ethical problems, and would also encourage the wrong types of people to become donors, such as the poor.

It is also an idea that many here and elsewhere find 'degrading' and 'repulsive', he was reported to have said last year. Efforts to increase the supply of organs for transplant should focus on greater public education instead.

Mr Khaw noted that countries which have tried organ trading attracted the 'wrong' type of donors - drug addicts, for example.

Apart from the moral issues, ophthalmologist Lam Pin Min, now deputy chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, also pointed out the medical risks to donors in a report last year.

Kidney donors face less than 0.1per cent risk of death, but it is more dangerous for liver donors who have a 1-3 per cent chance of dying and a 25per cent chance of problems from surgery.

There has been one kidney donor-death in Singapore. A woman who donated her kidney to her husband died shortly after the surgery in 2005.

The cause of her death is still not known.

This story was first published in The New Paper on June 29, 2008.