And I've been plenty more altruistic when it comes to tissue donations. About 10 years ago I came up as a match to a stranger through the Be The Match Foundation. I went through the whole process and gave that lady bone marrow. So I'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck. Everyone else in the chain is getting paid, there's no reason the donor should be left empty handed.
There's real money floating about at every step except for the one where they acquire the organ from the deceased's estate. It's a fair point.
Just as it's hard to justify not being willing to donate organs (because "you're dead, what do you care"), it's also hard to justify not paying those who do on the grounds that it's exploitative.
You refuse to save lives at literally no cost to yourself or anyone you know unless someone pays your family off?
> there's no reason the donor should be left empty handed
The donor is dead! Hands don't get any emptier!
> So I'm not just a grubby meanie out for a buck.
Ok, let's see...
Cost to you? 0.
Cost to your family? 0.
Benefit to others? You could save several lives.
Will only do it for? Money.
Yup, no conflict there.
You refuse to save lives
No, I don't think it is. This is a refusal to do something that costs literally nothing purely out of spite. If anything, that negates the good will that might have been earned by the prior act.
"I helped someone once, but I'd like everyone else to just die even though it costs me _nothing_ to save them" is not an admirable stance.
But nobody is forcing you to save lives at no cost to yourself (again, because you'll be dead) -- go ahead and opt out.
If a society no longer believes it requires the willing consent of the individual to engage in these kinds of actions.....well that opens up a few other problems.
So some poor sap who needs an organ is gonna get fucked because your "principled" stance against "the system" will keep you from donating?
You think they'd have a problem with your estate getting money? You think that marginal additional expense would cause them to be like "welp, better just die then."
I wouldn't oppose this "compensate the estate of the donor" idea at all, but to refuse to save lives as a result is insanity, especially because your refusal, and some posts about it on the internet, will amount to 0.
If only participants in the donor program could benefit from the donor program, then people who are ineligible to donate (like under age 18) would be unwilling sacrifices on your altar to Fairness. After all, what are they contributing?
Furthermore, if I'm in need of a vital transplant, there's likely enough systemic damage from the malfunctioning organ that the organs I've got are of questionable use as future transplants.
A "peculiar revenge fetish" is strong words considering your argument is so weak.
> the whole public is only healthier if the WHOLE public is healthier
In general I agree, but this is definitely not an issue with transplants. The demand far exceeds supply, so the question is how you sort the queue.
Of course, refusing to be a potential organ donor also affects the health of the WHOLE public. If you refuse to be a donor, the total number of organs available for transplant is reduced.
> people who are ineligible to donate (like under age 18)
Where did you get the idea that under 18s are not eligible to be donors?
I think everyone would agree, though, that under-18s' views would not make them ineligible as recipients.
> unwilling sacrifices on your altar to Fairness
If it's not them who are getting sacrificed on the Fairness altar, it is someone else who could be a recipient.
Trolling, or did you just not RTFA?
"Anyone can register a decision to become an organ donor after death, there is no age limit."
(As a side mark, a modern Jesus would've been a donor, IMO.)
Yes, he probably would have. But he would not have forced other people to opt-out. This is what people do not understand in this thread.
They snipe, engage in "organ shaming", change lines of argumentation, move goalposts and generally behave like indoctrinated teenagers who picked up some lines in a course.
My father, in his last ~5 years, was on kidney dialysis 3 times a week. It really hurt, seeing those people in pain, but it was the most beautiful department I ever saw of a hospital. Because people leave for quality of life, temporarily better. They come in exhausted. Heck, they often leave exhausted. But next day is gonna be better. There's no dept. which regularly provides a bigger impact on such a time based term.
Now, no my father was too old for a transplantation. He was low on the list. But I have seen young people on that dept. too. Young people of an age where normally their life is flourishing. Young people who, normally, have a full life ahead. Young people of whom my father could've been father, if you get what I mean.
It really requires a lack of empathy, or some kind of convincing of a religion (which cannot be proven true either, and is in contrast with what Jesus would've educated), that you say that after you passed away you don't want your organs to be donated. Well, then have the balls to put in the effort to say so. Because the vast majority of people, are loving and good people.
On top of that, in The Netherlands (where the default was recently changed as well), most people are not even religious anymore (making the default donor more adequate). Plus, its an investment in a life, which should on the long term be good for the economy, as well as the happiness of families.
I don't know what a religious figure has to do with government policy with regards to human organs. At least outside of a theocracy.
Apparently not to the statists of HN though!