Hacker News Reader

The argument that organs would be thrown away otherwise doesn’t justify bypassing clearly defined consent and ethical standards.

View on HN

I agree entirely; they're two separate things.

Was this unethical? Yes. Is it the darkly hinted about conspiracy to procure black-market organs some will read into the headline? No.

You'll need to point out this darkly hinted conspiracy in the headline. Nowhere is it implied that someone was killed for their organs. If this was happening at Johns Hopkins, it would certainly be a story. The fact that they are prisoners should be irrelevant.

It omits that the prisoners are deceased and uses the term "vanish" which implies it's not known where the organs have gone.

"Alabama prisoners' organs vanish, and there's a whole lot of passing the buck" could easily be "Deceased prisoners' organs taken by University of Alabama against families wishes" but that's not going to get the clicks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com