Not one mention in the article about changing the organ donation system to be opt-out. That is such a wasted opportunity given the huge reach of NPR.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/business/economy/27view.h...
NPR is a news organization, not a lobby group.
Organ donation at death is entirely risk free to the donor. They have literally nothing to lose from it.
http://thelegalgeeks.com/2014/11/13/stealing-corpses-and-obs...
We are not property of the State therefore, society has no claim on it.
If we are property of the State then all we're disagreeing on is the moment where their claims supersede our own.
The moment of death is a convenient but negotiable/re-definable point: "Well, they're brain dead already.." or "Well, their quality of life.." or "Their chance of survival.."
Or to put it another way: Do you want want [your least favorite politician] writing this policy?
You're trying to force this into a "We {are|aren't} property of the state". Both sound completely wrong to me, on multiple levels. It's a TypeError. You're applying words in ways that don't match.
(You might as well try to convince me that "Beethoven's 5th is either color, or black-and-white". No, those are both wrong. I'm not going to agree with any conclusions you reach starting from either condition.)
Humans aren't "property" (of themselves, or anything else). And the state doesn't own something today just because it may own it after your death (e.g., when a person without a will dies, their house may go to the state, but that in no way means their house was "property of the state" while they were alive, and definitely not that all houses are property of the state).
> Do you want want [your least favorite politician] writing this policy?
Again, that sounds like a fallacy that's trying to goad people into a false choice. I don't want my least favorite politician writing any government policy. There is no framework yet conceived under which a malicious administrator would not be able to cause great harm by instituting a policy of their own design. That doesn't mean all such policies are inherently ill-conceived.
Blood is a funny case because we have a huge never-ending need for fresh blood, and a great number of people (est. 1/3 to 1/2 the population) are eligible to donate, yet very few do. Globally we're so desperate for supply that, even though the WHO has set a goal of 100% non-paid volunteer donors due to safety concerns, we do still have to pay people, and America sells a lot of blood overseas to all those other countries who are too cautious to pay their donors cash outright.
Tons of people are perfectly willing to donate blood. That's not even the problem. In the aftermath of a disaster, blood centers near the disaster area often have so many donors they have to throw some of it away. People are not that afraid of needles, or unwilling to help their fellow humans. They just don't, usually.
Living in my developed country with all of its benefits has costs. I pay taxes to help fund the general welfare, and may be called to serve on a jury, or even go fight in a war. Calling on a few people to give blood doesn't sound too onerous to me.
I don't claim to have the answer, but I think everyone agrees we can do a lot better than what we've got now.
Their donations might just not be accepted.
The willingness is what's important.
One option I've heard that sounds better is just force people to make a selection when they apply for a drivers license. Current you can opt in, but if you don't do anything you automatically opt out. Instead, just don't accept the form unless they opt in or out. This means the people who would donate but either miss the form or think they'll eventually sign up later (and never get around to it) are signed up.
And, if the ends do justify the means, what about requiring people to be organ donors except for the same exclusions allowed with vaccines? We effectively force vaccines for the greater good and this would be another similar case. Not like the people will miss their organs and as for the family, they won't even know unless you told them as the funeral industry routinely repairing bodies that have gone through far more than an organ donation.
Yes, the ends justify the means. It's, like, one of the foremost global examples of an ends-justify-means cost-benefit change we could make to improve lives.
It's not clear to me why that would apply to the earlier comment, but not to yours. Unless it's because of the part I left out about them not feeling strongly enough about ticking a box, but then I don't see what the problem is with the original suggestion of making that box-ticking obligatory.
Just switching to opt-in by default has none of these problems, so that's why I support opt-in-by-default but not mandatory donation. It's not inconsistent .
Doesn't opt-out also hurt people while they are alive, who are now pressured to remain vigilant about having to make sure they're not missing any forms, or their forms not being processed correctly, etc., spending their life feeling a lack of control where a single misstep results in disrespecting their after-death wishes?
And again, what's the problem with making the box-ticking obligatory e.g. when picking up a driver's licence, rather than making it opt-out?
Opt-in-by-default does have the disadvantage you mentioned, but I don't think it carries much weight. Society could solve this problem just by sending a certificate/card to people who opt-out to tell both them and medical practitioners of their choice.
> And, if the ends do justify the means, what about requiring people to be organ donors except for the same exclusions allowed with vaccines?
I'm fine with this.
Assuming you are a proponent of opt-out organ donation: Should then bodies be taken as needed for scientific research?
Yes, in that case they would normally try to give it to my heirs first, but my heirs have no right of ownership of my organs.
https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/uk-laws/organ-donation-law-...
Yes.
That ER doc you're talking about has spent their entire life working their fingers to the bone to help others. They are beyond committed and passionate about saving every possible life, even when it's detrimental to their own health.
To suggest they might not work hard to save someone right in front of them is insulting and horrible.
A simple web search for "surgeon charged with" will reveal that sometimes surgeons do things they shouldn't, just like members of any other profession. How do you square "They are beyond committed and passionate" with surgeons who rape their patients, or knowingly perform unnecessary surgeries out of greed? You can't.
Look at even the mental health profession, where in all cases Doctors are supposed to be 'helping others'. And yet I know that I could never see my housemate's doctor and get the same set of meds that I get seeing mine.
We both have very similar conditions, and yet the life outcomes are vastly different in that change in meds. Yet housemate's doc insists they are doing the 'morally right' thing.
Edit: FWIW, my interactions with Doctors and Pre-med students outside of the actual medical profesison and the stories I've heard do nothing to help my assessment.
Counter-argument in the form of a question: does one life matter as much as (or more than) three or four that might be saved from that one life's organs? Especially if the one that's clinging to life might've ended up in that position as a consequence of their own actions, such as by way of an at-fault car crash?
I'd argue that the doctor's responsibility is to save any life presented to them regardless of how, but I won't put it past anyone to do the calculus above.
(this may appear to meet the textbook definition of a strawman argument, but I'd venture that this is--by virtue of how many organs can come from one person--a real enough possibility to warrant consideration)
Coming back to the calculus performed: if the odds of survival are much less than certain, what's the point at which a doctor, thinking algorithmically rather than with a mission, decides that there's more value in lives saved from a patient's organs than in trying to save the primary patient and potentially losing organ viability (or just time) if the mission fails?
I'm pretty certain the vast majority of doctors will obey the Hippocratic Oath as intended. I'm also somewhat certain that a minority subset of doctors will interpret the Oath differently than others, and this is the most impossible assertion to falsify because very few surgeons/teams will admit this short of a certifiably anonymous survey... if that.
Wales switched to opt out a few years ago and the rest of the UK is changing now.
The real issues of perverse incentives having a significant impact has to do more with for-profit companies that participate in the market for body parts and the state of interdependence that now exists with our understaffed medical examiners. There are far more cases of aggressive organ harvesting interfering with criminal investigations than ER doctors letting people die to collect the organs.
I know you want to stop wasting valuable organs from dead people that could go to help living people - and I do too! I just don't want people to lose agency over their own lives and body parts.
Then there are the wicked, amoral, heartless people - like me - who think people should be free to sell their organs if they want to. I would personally sell any of my organs (after I'm dead) for $1 each. But as a form of protest against the current system, I won't ever willingly donate them.
I hope you'll reconsider.
If organ selling is legalized, poor people will be coerced by force or by money. And they may not realize the full health implications of that until much later, where they have no recourse.
As a society, we generally try to prevent people from entering such unfair contracts, e.g, you can't agree to become a slave, or establishing ceiling on interest rates to limit predatory lending. People willing to sell their organs are probably desperate enough to agree to anything, and saving them is worthwhile.
The act of creating a market for organs is intrinsically morally repugnant.
Money are just an tool used by humanity, not the other way around.
Anyways with an opt out system the market for 'sold' organs would probably be non-existent.
It might occur to you that your childish ideas about "sticking it to the man" is ignorant horseshit.
>I hope you'll reconsider.
Yeah well, I hope you'll reconsider too.
This is all basically a "greater good" argument end of the day that you either agree that if your body can be used to help others then it should be or the alternative is you are a selfish ass. There is honestly no inbetween here.