Slashdot Mirror
Ending Organ Donor Shortages?
Tracy2112 writes "An interesting and recurring science fiction theme is the idea of black-market traffic in human body parts -- as Larry Niven termed it, "organlegging". According to this USA Today's Op-Ed piece on Yahoo, we're getting closer . . . including
LifeSharers.com, , an organization working to sign up "preferred donors" who agree to preferentially donate to other LifeSharer members. Is this a great way to reward people for being generous with their unused body parts -- or a scary flashback to how early 'subscription-only' fire departments worked?"
Part of the problem is caused by dead people whose families don't allow the deceased's organs to be harvested, even if that person had given full legal consent for doctors to do so when they died. That does not make sense. If families have to follow the last will and testament of dead people, why is this an exception? Wouldn't these familie would be aware of this and wouldn't want to disrespect the wishes of their dead?
Bash script for FP whores
They don't accept an organ donation from a member of the general public when and if the need arises - I'm fine with it.
Rehabilitation is a nonstarter it doesn't work it never has untill the pschological "sciences" can actually live up to the name it never will. If youre going to sentance people to death then it is only fitting that they should make the last contribution to society they can and repay they debt they could nto.
Simply make donor status mandatory for a motorcycle license and eliminate the helmet laws.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
So, you can't have my organs unless you give up yours when you die. I hope that when I am dead, thoughts of how my organs were "spent" don't haunt me.
You'll have that sometimes...
In the latest issue of Wired they have a page detailing how your body is roughly worth a cool 46 million
The way to encourage organ donation is to make the the default option on your driver's license instead of something you have to request. In addition, doctors shouldn't have to get permission from the family if the deceased already has an organ donor card.
Hopefully this won't turn into a Scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. "But I'm not dead yet!"
The dogcow says "Moof!"
...Slashdot readers around the world complain about problems with access to organs, mainly female breasts!
This seems like a good idea to me, except for one or two potential problems.
What if people wanted to leave the list? Would they have to return thier organs? If not, people could join if they needed organs, get the organs, then quit. Saying 'you can't join the list if you already need an organ' wouldn't be a very good rule, but 'you can't leave the list' wouldn't be too hot either.
Also, if organs were only availiable to donors, people whose religion said 'no donating' might not be able to get organs. Of course, a religion which allowed people to recieve organs but not give them would be a bit hypocritical.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I think it's Hawaii that rewards organ donors with preferred placement on the organ priority list.
Im sorry. We waste way too much time energy and money prolonging the lives of halfdead people.
So if a group wants to make it easier for THEM to prolong their lives, who cares. But noone should complain. The fire analogy is wrong. General safety in a society should be encouraged and given to the society as a whole. Artificial extension of life isn't a needed function and has little intrinsic benefits.
Subscription fire service is only comparable to this donation service if everyone else who subscribed were actually the ones who put out the fire, like a fire brigade.
How about a small, legal form that says "I don't care what my family says; when I'm dead, take what you want. My estate waives all claim and title to the flesh." Include a card the size of a license that says so, as well as a contact number to confirm.
Or, a law that says you sign you drivers license if you DON'T want to donate, and assume anyone that doesn't sign wants to.
If your talking about execution, there are problems with organ donations from death row inmates. In most states lethal injection is the preferred method, the chemicals used in this process however are so powerful that they render all the organs useless, same with gas chambers. Old sparky also destroys organs pretty effectivly. I do remember hearing about one guy who chose the firing squad so his organs (asiddes from the heart and probably a lung then) could be harvested.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Oh yeah ,republicans with deep religous beliefs are against it. Isn't that PRO-LIFE stance hipocritical.
Easy enough for someone to be a condemned criminal in, say, China and wake up a piece at a time. Brings in lots of solid western currency too--far higher profit than prison labour to make running shoes.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's a simple waste of organs to stick them in the ground after one dies. Better to give so that others may live - wouldn't affect me in the slightest. After all, I'd be DEAD ALREADY!
"...or a scary flashback to how early 'subscription-only' fire departments worked?"
Or make less of an effort to save you because your organs are so badly needed. It wouldn't be the first time.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
If there's a market for organs, and criminals sentenced to the death penalty are required to donate them, you now have an industry that profits from having more capital punishment. They might then lobby the government to expand the death penalty for the same reason a defense contractor might lobby for military expansion or a private prison industry might oppose legalizing marijuana. Scary thought.
That said, death row inmates should be allowed to donate organs if they choose to. I just don't want it to be in some corporation's financial interest to expand the death penalty.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
I think that the organ donation network mentioned is being slightly misrepresented by the fire department analogy; what I can gather is that the network serves to make organ donation more ubiquitous by giving preferential organ reciept to those who have also pledged to donate, an idea which seems a little off but which I'd look a little more into before I trash it...
Rationally, this idea will be beneficial to everyone. The incentive behind this scheme is that members contribute to the welfare of others so that if they ever need an organ donation, their chances of getting it are higher. The incentive here is really clear and so people who don't contribute their organs normally now will do so.
Let's say this whole thing catches on fast and soon a large proportion or organ donors belong to this clique. You might thing that this is some sort of "organ legging." However, as everyone realizes that membership into this clique brings great benefits, they too will sign up for it in large numbers. Once this clique is large enough, it will be indistinguishable from "normal" organ donation, where the incentive is basically the same as that of LifeSharers, but on a larger scale and more implicit). IMHO this Domino Effect is a very good thing.
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
There will be no shortage of organs when they're HARVESTED FROM CRIMINAL P2P USERS after the death penalty copyright infringement cases roll in.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
When the world's resources run dry, who will we blame? Those who prolonged their lives with transplants, or those taking up space with their graves?
I'd like to see something like a scoring system, where the preference is still there, but doesn't outweigh the facts of the situation.
Now for the rant: anyone think this is like affirmative action? All things being equal, it's ok to help minorities. But stop giving all the scholarships to idiots, please!
The fuckhatted parent actually tried to fool me, James A. Motherfucking A. Joyce, into looking at tubgirl. Sorry, pal, but I've known about that bullshit from before you were just a stain on your momma's mattress. Asshead.
That is not only an interesting story, but also some interesting analysis by the submitter, in a tin-foil hat sort of way. I certainly have no problem with generating further methods of receiving potentially lifesaving organs short of attempting to hasten the demise of a donor, but I do realize that there are some out there who have strict moral or religious beliefs who are concerned about being forced to be involved in such a program.
This program is awesome because it provides a little more incentive for those who are on the fence while allowing those who absolutely refuse to donate to still be able to take organs when needed through existing resources. No it may not be exactly fair, but it does stand to reason that those who help continue to make such a great feature of modern medicine as donor organs available for future generations should also have some advantage when receiving organs.
You can't have it both way, at least until we figure out a way to grow organs separate from a full human since cloning's going to be a big legal pain-in-the-ass for years to come. Such is the nature of compromise. Now quit trying to screw the sick from having ready access to lifesaving organs by keeping the supply low.
Shawn
Because you gotta bitch
Don't give them any ideas! They might take you seriously!
Part of the problem is that you can be officially considered dead, if you are a organ donor, or not dead if you aren't. Despite what the organ donor perponents say, you really aren't as safe if you are a donor. I know someone who died "on the table" and came back, she is not a donor, but if she was, she wouldn't be alive today.
The hard part about organ donations, is the organs need to be taken out very soon after a death, and sometimes it's too soon.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
So if i donate organs to organ donors, my organs will be redonated upon the recipiant's death. That's awesome. My spleen might live for 300 years in 15 differnt bodies with this program.
Getting more people to sign consent-forms, and even making sure that families aren't able to stop organ donation when consent has been given by the donor, won't solve the problem.
Truth of the matter is that there are simply not enough donors / not the right donors to provide all necessary organs. Where I live (Belgium) organ donation works as an opt-out system. There's a law that says that everybody is an organ donor (when they die) unless they have a certain form in their wallet stating the opposite. Hardly anybody opts out yet still there are not enough organs. Reason for this is that people that die tend to have been old and sick, or (if it's someone young) have most likely been in a traffic accident. None of these are the right circumstances for organ donation. Add to this the fact that you need matching blood types, have very little time for the organ harvasting etc... and it gets pretty obvious that taking organs from humans as spare bodyparts will only help a small percentage of cases.
I'd place my money on using organs specifically grown for harvasting: e.g. pigs are used to grow skin that helps burn victims.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
If it weren't for all the superstition in the world this wouldn't be a problem. When you're dead you're dead, you have no use for any organs. Salvage whats usable and cremate the rest. When will our species ever grow up?
Wait until YOU are the one who needs an organ transplant... I hope you never need, but think about it.
In my state, public hanging is still legal. (The only one that it's still legal in, by the way)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
We'll see what you think of this "unnecessary function" when a loved one is about to die due to complications of something that an organ transfer would heal.
I read a few years ago about how street kids in S. America were disappearing and the few times the bodies were ever found, it was with parts missing. In many parts of the world, dying people have the means as well as an obvious motive to seek out replacement parts, no questions asked.
My rights don't need management.
This is the way AMerica is going - taxes are bad, so the only services we will get is for-pay (and militatry services), and poor people need to undestand that being poor is a sin and they will die for their sins. Because the only reason for being poor is being lazy.
Vote Quimby!
...when I saw "Ending organ donor shortage" was "Did Honda, Yamaha or Suzuki release a new kind of motocycle with all the standard features but at 1/10 the price?"
That would surely provide us with a fresh wave of organ supply...
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Viz., the abortion industry. Does anyone know if abortion providers try and increase the number of abortions?
And no, we don't need to start a dialogue on the morality either of abortion or the death penalty to answer this question...
I have a friend who's wife is a nurse in an emergency room. She talked me out of being an organ donor on my driver's license for this very reason.
It's not a case of doctors being 'evil', simply that if there's incentive for you to be dead, they might be pushed to make that decision about you while you still have a chance of 'coming back'.
She said you can put that kind of thing in your will. I haven't done that, but I guess I'm more worried about keeping me alive than someone else.
/.: why the hell am I here?
How do you explain the shortage of any good or service? Simply: the price is too low. Concerning organs ready for transplant, the fault of the shortage is the notion of organ "donors" itself.
Now, there's nothing wrong with someone wanting to give away their organs for free. That's fine, and they should be allowed to do so. There's nothing wrong with charity. It should come as no surprise, however, that many, many people do not do so.
Why not pay people for their organs. Obviously, no one can sell their heart, or lung, or whatever -- it's just too useful a thing to have if you plan to go on living. But, why couldn't people be paid to allow their organs to be harvested after their death (or clinical death)?
No cash would change hands until after the organs were actually harvested: this makes it an honest transaction for buyer and seller. The money could then be used for burial, to settle a person's affairs, or be bequeathed to heirs.
Not everyone would be interested in such a deal, of course, but many more people would be than currently donate organs. Moreover, the incentive of money would get many more people to consider allowing their organs to be used after their death. There would be a monetary incentive to get people thinking, and thinking leads to taking action.
"Charity begins at home," as the saying goes. Selling organs, and therefore allowing your organs to do some good for those close to you, your loved ones, would certainly encourage more people.
Organ transplant, as it is, is so expensive, that the added expense of the organ's price is likely to raise the price of the treatment hardly at all. Selling your organs would be no "get rich quick scheme"; rather, it would take the place of a burial insurance policy, or offer a small nest egg to a person's family.
To those who bristle at the notion of an "economic transaction," I say, get over it. As it stands, depending on donors allows thousands of people to die each year. Are these deaths under such a "noble system" preferable to a market in organs? I say it's just the opposite.
The great shame is that this has not yet been implemented, and that so many die as a result of an "altruistic" system.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Just in case anyone thinks he's joking, my girlfriend's father is an ER doctor (at Kaiser in Oakland), and he does refer to motorcyclists as "donors."
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I really like this idea. I have 'issues' with organ donation (and blood/plasma donation). Like previously stated, I don't want doctors to rush my death to save people, I like my life and they're going to have to wait in line, like patient terminal patients. Also, I am dubious on my prefered disposal after death, so don't really know if I want my organs going elsewhere, interupting my successful reuptake into the nitrogen cycle.
But one of my main problems is with who it goes to. This is the same reason I don't donate blood. I want to check out who I'm saving, so I don't waste a perfectly good kidney on a moron I'd rather see dead. Like that bruhaha in California, where the prisoner got preferencial donation, I don't a murderer getting my liver. I don't want an SUV driving soccer mom getting it either, or George Bush, or pretty much most of society. Maybe if the Dali Lama needed a heart I'd help 'im out.
Now if I got to know the possible recipriants before death, and liked them, then I wouldn't mind. Keeps my marrow from falling into the carpals of a serial killer, lawyer, or politician. Maybe small organ pacts, like me and my five freinds sign a binding contract, or some such.
Yes, I'm a non-charitable ass. I just dislike most people, and don't care about those who I don't know enough to literally give them part of myself.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
There are tales of people whose kidneys burnt to the ground while a competitor's fire brigade stood watching. It took the great liver holocaust that burnt half the city before things changed. Let's not repeat the same mistakes.
I am designated as a full body donor, I have signed papers on me, my friends/family know my wishes.
I am for any plans that acknowledge that my organs are my own and not societies. I don't support any effort that would make donation the default. It's just not right. We are not government wombs or organ banks. Lifesharers looks like they reward people for doing the right thing. This gives a hard value to the act of donation without doling out the cash which some people find offensive. We need more of this.
-1 asshole
"Subscription" fire departments collect revinue two ways, (a) by billing monthly insurance sytle, or (b) by billing you for the number of trucks, men, and feet of hose laid when there's an actual emergency.
Subscription fire departments don't ignore EMS and fire calls from people who didn't pay their premium - they just bill them on the back end.
Similarly, no priority is given by order of who paid up front and who didn't. EMS and fire calls are processed by order of severity, just like any non-subscription (read: municipal) emergency service provider.
Rural/Metro is one such company. There are numerous others - especially in the EMS (esp ambulance) business.
This is VASTLY different from giving priority to subscribers first for life-threatening medical conditions.
I guess I've been doing without enough sleep, but a bit of trivia popped into my head about the concept of a subscription fire department.
As I recall, buildings in the U.S. in the 19th century were marked with a designation near the address that indicated what insurance company the owner used. Since fire departments were privately run by various insurance companies, the crews used these to determine if who should respond to a fire (no, I don't know if they just let a building burn down if it was susbcribed to a rival company nor do I know if they even bothered to call the other company's crew if there was a mixup).
Again, I do not recall what the designation is (a sign? some address variant?), but supposedly the buildings in Disneyland's New Orleans Square all have these same designations to make them more accurate to the period.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I think that if you won't donate organs you don't get donated organs. That would change some religious fuckers minds real quick.
The rules would be simple. You get on the list no matter what you do up to age 21, but if you haven't regestered by then, you don't get organs unless you do. AND if you register after age 21 you are not eligible for organs for 2 years after you declare yourself an organ doner. If you are not an organ doner by age 40 you cannot ever recieve a donated organ.
It isn't fair that people who think that it is OK to take someone'e organs are allowed to say that you can't take theirs if the shoe was on the other foot.
Rich people already practically pay for their organs (Look at Mickey Mantle). Why not shift the balance to those that are actually donating.
SW
Personally, I don't want to be an organ donar when I die and I don't want any organs from anyone else. If I get sick and die, then I die.
I'm so depressed now, I'm almost suicidal anyway.
Here's how it works: You make a will and name someone else as a executor, usually a lawyer but in my grandmother's case she chose my aunt. After you die the executor is charge of following your wishes. But here's the thing, he or she can do whatever their heart desires as long as the family goes along with it.
If there's disagreement I think it goes to court and a judge becomes executor and just follows the will. So if you say you are a donor and your entire family is against it then you may have to curse at them from heaven after they put you in the ground, intact.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
People should be able to sell rights to their post-mortem organs, and their non-vital organs like kidnies. Honestly I don't see what the big deal is.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The black market for organs already exists. Please read "Kill and cull: China rejects doctor's testimony". This article gives a chilling description of how Chinese "doctors" harvest organs from prisoners while they are still alive. These organs then go to wealthy customers in a growing black market.
I live in the city of Fullerton, CA. Like most municipalites in the U.S., it has faced a severe funding crunch over the past few years. In response, they have established a Paramedic Subscription Program. Basically, if you call a paramedic, you get billed by the city $200 for Basic Life Support and $300 for Advanced Life Support. If, on the other hand, you sign up for the service and pay an annual fee of $30, you do not pay. Ambulance costs (as they are pretty much everywhere in the U.S.) are not covered. Regardless of your payment status, though, they will come if you call.
While I have issues with calling paramedics and being charged in the first place (and, yes, I understand why they're doing it - to make ends meet and reduce frivilous calls), I can see where this fee makes a lot of sense to a business owner, who might see numerous 911 calls over a year (especially restaraunts, with choking/heart attack calls).
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
This is a P2P idea, so why not combine this with a P2P network.
2000 MP3s per organ, hearts and private parts are gonna cost you Phantom Menace: Director's Cut six months before release.
Just raise speed limits in school zones to 170 MPH, as The Onion recommended.
What if two subscribed people get ill and need a new heart and only one heart is available? Will the losing person get a refund?
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Do they wake up in a hotel bathtub and see a card that say "Don't get up, call 911"?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Most abortion providers are OB/GYNs. Depending on their practice, they may also deliver babies, which takes longer, and nets them more money. So it's probably in their interest to discourage abortion. Also, doctors swear an oath to their patients, while judges are responsible to society as a whole. Society, debatably, benefits when criminals give up organs for good citizens. The patient (in this case the criminal) clearly does not.
The August issue of Wired (11.08) has a spread titled "How To Sell Your Body For $46 million" (pp46-47). Not sure if it is online yet but some of the highlights:
Fluids and Tissues: $43million
Lungs: $116,000
Heart: $57,000
Eyes: $8,000
Brain: $662,000
Kidney: $92,000
Pancreas: $46,000
Small Intestine: $72,000
Liver: $474,000
There is a more detailed breakdown, but those are the major points.
Small story from reuters: It may be illegal, immoral and certainly ill-advised, but selling every usable part of your body could fetch upward of $45 million
The first organization that learns to grow these organs individually will make a killing.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
15 minutes later and you're on dialysis again.
I can't believe organ donation is even optional. Families can bite it -- the fact is, healthy organs are always in short supply, and people NEED them. There's a time to let personal preference and religious belief rule, and there's a time when the needs of the state overrule them. Personally, I'm a registered organ donor. Hell, my mother is donating anything that is isn't salvaged for sickies to medical schools for dissection.
Because hospitals are too afraid of being sued by the families if they take the organs anyway. Personally, I think it's disgusting that a family would ignore a person's request like that, and that our legal system is screwed up enough that a lawsuit would probably prevail in such a case...
How about this:
If you want to be eligible to receive transplanted organs should you ever need them, you must be a registered organ donor.
Otherwise, too bad.
This way, you encourage people to register as organ donors (as I have, for example) *and* you cut down on the leeches. If someone has a religious or other dumbass objection to donating organs, then how is it fair for them to be able to receive them while other people who are willing to contribute to the system die on waiting lists?
It's just like any peer-to-peer filesharing system: if you want to download, you really have to share for the system to work.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Donating a kidney will mean a difficult operation (with all the risks that entails), an extensive recovery time (more so that for the recipient), an increased risk of kidney failure for the donor coupled with a significantly reduced lifespan, all for a relatively slight extension to the recipients life. (Figures are out there but I don't know them - I'd like to see something greater than a 3 year post operation survival rate).
And after all this, there is still a high rate of organ rejection - 50 percent of patients have faced rejection episodes within the first year.
Other than getting off dialysis, the benefits for the patient include:
(1)Increased feeling of well-being
(2)Fewer restrictions on diet and activities
(3)Increased energy level
To my mind, I would expect something more - hell you're donating an *organ* here!
I could understand a family member doing it, but I think that donating a kidney to someone you don't even know is something that *you* may learn to regret.
My wife is taiwanese and still has relatives on the mainland.
We visited the mainland in January and I met her cousin who is an organ transplant surgeon. He spoke openly about how in China you can can examine a catalog of potential donors on death row with blood and tissue work already done. If you find a match you can designate ahead of time who will donate the body part that you need. When that persons time is up the surgeons are waiting to harvest.
The surgeon said he couldn't drink that night because he had surgery the next day. He joked how you wouldn't be able to do that in the US, ie schedule your transplant surgeries in advance. Many executions are done around the new year as a sort of cleansing/celebration/unrest quelling. The surgeon said that was a very busy time for him. I asked him whether they still bill the prisoners family for the bullet - they do. Strange when the body parts are worth much more than the bullet huh?
Given all that I bet if you are VIP in China and deathly ill that the execution of "your" prisoner might be pushed up?
One last thing people may not know that mitigates some of this. There are no voluntary donors. Everyone in China wants to be buried whole. It is VERY important to them. I joked that the world should adopt a system where only people who are willing to donate should receive organs because not every country allowed what China did.
My wife made a funny face and then translated. To the mainlanders at the dinner THAT was a funny idea. Why not use the prisoners that are full of shame and have hurt society?
OK. So let's hope they're good organ-izers.
Your world is a nightmare.
We could do an americans with disability recycling act - those "half-dead" people like Christopher Reeve, who we are spending a lot of money keeping alive, much less spending lots of money researching ways of destroying other human life (embryos, the unborn - maybe 2 year olds if the organs need to be that mature to affect the fix). Just send them to a chop shop. There are lots of mentally retarded and mentally ill who are in good physical condition. Recycle them. The Nazis started there - a "life unworthy of living". It was for their own good after all, and there were no beneficiaries since transplantation didn't exist at the time.
In Michigan there was a case of someone injured in a motorcycle accident where they ended up with brain damage, but still could speak in a rudimentary way. His sister swore that he said he never wanted to live like that (of course the estate was shrinking daily on his medical care). They eventually got a court order to let him die horribly by starvation and dehydration (and you didn't think Michigan had the death penalty).
When we go from the dignity of life to the utility of life, we are all in danger. If we developed organ transplantation in 1840 the civil war would not have happened and the South would be a center for medical research where there would be valuable "property" - organ farms to replace the cotton with what would have some euphemism like "livestock" describing what was going on.
That's one of the best ideas I've heard all day.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
I wish to warn you about a new crime ring that is targeting business travelers. This ring is well organized, well funded, has very skilled personnel, and is currently in most major cities and recently very active in New Orleans. The crime begins when a business traveler goes to a lounge for a drink at the end of the work day. A person in the bar walks up as they sit alone and offers to buy them a drink. The last thing the traveler remembers until they wake up in a hotel room bath tub, their body submerged to their neck in ice, is sipping that drink. There is a note taped to the wall instructing them not to move and to call 911. A phone is on a small table next to the bathtub for them to call. The business traveler calls 911 who have become quite familiar with this crime. The business traveler is instructed by the 911 operator to very slowly and carefully reach behind them and feel if there is a tube protruding from their lower back. The business traveler finds the tube and answers, "Yes." The 911 operator tells them to remain still, having already sent paramedics to help. The operator knows that both of the business traveler's kidneys have been harvested. This is not a scam or out of a science fiction novel, it is real. It is documented and confirmable. If you travel or someone close to you travels, please be careful.
Yea yea I know where it came from.
I don't think the analogy to private fire services is fair; it is not a monetary donation being requested. Sure, ideally we could help everybody, regardless of their own desire to help others or their own hypocrisy in regards to donations, but that just isn't the case.
I personally am afraid of needles, and have never given blood. On the other hand, were I to need it, it would be fairly hypocritical of me to think I deserve preference. If the ability to get preference can be used as incentive to promote donation (and it certainly does motivate me to want to give), I see no harm.
This is much closer, then, to an anlogy of a volunteer fire service which goes first to the homes of volunteer members. First, but not only.
When I got my license, I made a point of ensuring I was marked as an organ donor. I can understand that some people have religions preventing it, or otherwise oppose the idea for one reason or another, but...
If you're not against it for any reason, you really ought to check it off. If you're against it, that's fine. But I know a lot of people who don't have a reason for not doing it, it was just too much work to check the box off or something?
Pesonally, I'd rather know that when I die, I (indirectly) save someone else's life. (And as someone once joked: "Remember, they're not taking your organs. They're keeping them alive for you.") If you don't have a problem saving a life after you die through organ donation, please consider making sure you indicate such next time you renew your license.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
And will remain so, until the day someone is actually thawed out and brought back to life.
Not a frog, or some other creature, but a human.
Until then, it remains a theory, and hence, a fantasy.
The only problem with this is people who can't register as donors, like people with communicable diseases, etc. Otherwise, it's an awesome idea.
Viz., the abortion industry. Does anyone know if abortion providers try and increase the number of abortions?
In China they do, but not for financial reasons. AFAIK, most doctors who practice abortion in first world countries would prefer a reduced number of abortions (because of a decreased numbers of unwanted pregnancies, not because of outlawing/illegal abortions). Usually, doctors have a strong ethical commitment to curing people (or preventing harm), so I wouldn't expect them to push people into unnecessary abortions. Besides, I don't think that there is a real abortion industry in many countries. US abortionists see a lot of harassment, so that might have created a sharp divide between doctors/clinics who/that provide abortions and those who/that don't. That greatly increases the dependence on the number of abortions performed.
PS. The Cider House Rules by John Irving is a good book about the ethics of abortions.
Using your lawn mowing example, you could think of it as your yard getting *so* bad that the city is fining you as an eyesore. If city cleanup crews come up and do your yard after the deadline, the city can stick you with a bill (because you were violating the law and were given a reasonable time to correct the situation). In the ambulance case, ambulance services (as I understand it) operate under a monopoly granted by the municipality. Thus, they have the legal right to act as the city - e.g. drag your carcass to the hospital and then stick you with a bill (the rates for which were presumably set with the city's blessing when they granted the monopoly).
This, of course, compares someone getting injured and unconscious akin to a criminal (or at least someone who has commited an infraction [an "infractioner"?]). I'm sure there are other ways that the argument falls apart.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Everybody has something that somebody else can use, so anybody can join LifeSharers, no matter how sick you are. Most people who can't donate organs can donate corneas, tissue, etc. Join LifeSharers at http://www.lifesharers.com/enroll.htm. It's free. It could save your life.
Usually a religion that prohibits donation of an organ also prohibits the reciept of a transplant, so that's a problem that takes care of itself (ie Jehovah's witnesses).
on an episode of "Max Headroom"!
Save the blanks! Outlaw body banks now!
Anyone know if someone had herpes could still donate? I would assume that the trade-off is worth it in some cases but what about other diseases, specifically AIDS.
When I'm done with this vessel, I will transplant myself into John Malkovitch. I found this hole in the wall behind a filing cabinet that lets me get inside him and control him. I won't tell where it is though.
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Actaully, the way the subscription worked was you pay your fee, they come, rescue you, put out your burning house. You dont pay your fee, they come rescue you, and you watch you house burn to the ground while they keep it from spreading to neighbors houses. Theyll save lives, but not property. You dont pay, you take your chances. At least that was my understaing of how it worked. Seemed quite fair to me.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
but watch how many will change their tune when THEIR ass is the one that will be saved!
cpeterso
Niven also wrote about Criminals sentanced to execution being used for organ donation, and the slippery slope this might cause. In one short story the character is arrested and faced with execution as he is a repeat offender. He escapes through some fluke in the system, and tries to run away through the federal building where he 'stumbles' upon the vats with executed criminals being used for organ donation. To make a long story short, he's recaptured, released on a technicality from prison, and the reader finds out he was in jail for a second offense of a minor traffic violation, the appetite for organs to keep the old living being that demanding in Niven's Sci-Fi world. Sounds like a film worthy of Tom Cruise ;)
This is a short term problem. Scientists are working very hard for either growing replacement organs within other animals or doing it on external scaffolding OR doing it within your own body. Right now this requires using embryonic stem cells, but there are many scientists also working on how to get normal cells to revert to stem cells.
Once that happens, all bets are off =)
man, those chinese are FUCKED up!
Meanwhile, any technology that could plausibly rebuild your brain after the damage from disease or trauma, the ischemic damage, and the enormous damage from cryopreservation itself, is pretty clearly not going to have a lot of trouble building you a new body. Probably a new body that you won't be able to distinguish from the original one.
Not to say that plenty of people won't go for whole-body anyway, but I can't say I believe they'll be doing it on the basis of being more "informed". They'll be doing it on the basis of the same religious and sentimental factors that make anybody else not donate organs.
A copy of the article is here
Why would any doctor kill a person for the organs? Because (according to the article) organs only last so long, and the longer the blood is pumping the longer the organs stay fresh:
"You go without a pulse for two minutes in some hospitals, you're dead. They take your organs. In other places, at two minutes, they're still trying to revive you."
"Then there is the procedure itself, which can look like anything but an operation on a dead body. For example, in Charleston, South Carolina a 16-year-old girl was shot in the head. At the time of hospital admission she was showing signs of life--she was moving and breathing. Though a CAT scan showed the bullet lodged in her skull, it had skirted major blood vessels, and the brain itself appeared remarkably intact. That didn't stop attending physicians from declaring her dead two hours later. She was rushed to an operating room, where surgeons opened her abdomen and cut assorted arteries in order to remove both kidneys and her spleen. When the ventilator was shut off, she failed to breathe--no big shock, since the transplant team also bisected her diaphragm. Even after this full-scale assault on her body, 14 minutes passed before the girl's heart gave out. Finally, mercifully, she was dead. "
"Marino tells the story of the Toledo man who shot a woman in the head. "The hospital declared her brain-dead. Surgeons did the harvest. But just before they made the decision to cut, a neurosurgeon had examined the woman. When he found out later about the harvest, he was furious. He says, 'This woman might have been blind in one eye or had other problems, but I think we could have salvaged her!' So when the man is charged with murder, the defense had the neurosurgeon and other experts testify~' that what actually caused the woman's death was not the gunshot but the harvest. Now they got the guy on felonious assault, but they didn't get him for murder." "
What about lawsuits? Lawsuits are scary things, but after the doctor kills you to harvest your organs what good is 10 million dollars?
Not only that, but your family might have to pay for the donation of your organs:
"researchers found an average of $16,645 billed to the families of patients for procedures that should have been charged to OPOs."
I don't want to be killed just for my organs and I don't want my loved ones saddled with 15 grand to donate my organs so I will never sign a organ donation card.
---
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
For one there is this whole morality thing about not giving the deceased's family money for organs.
During the chain of events that happen that eventually lead to an organ donation there are a lot of people involved. Doctors, medics, nurses, coroners - all of them, every one of them are getting paid.
The only people in that chain that are not getting reimbursed is the family of the deceased.
I am not seeing the moral problem here.
Maybe it doesn't need to be cash exactly. How about covering funeral expenses or something similar? God knows it will offer an incentive.
My big problem is this, who gets the organs in the end.
When we talk about organ donation most people think liver, kidneys, hearts and eyes and the like.
Well there are others too like skin and bones.
Skin is needed, desperatly by burn units. To date nothing is more effective then skin grafts, and often a burn victim doesn't have enough of his own left to treat him with his own skin.
I would have no issue being an organ donar if I knew that my skin was going to this use.
However....
Cosmetic surgeons need it too. And no I am not talking the good kind (reconstructive) I am talking the eye-tuck, face lift kind.
Bone has exactly the same problem. Orthopedists need bone for bone grafts and surgery. But the Cosmetic surgeons need it too.
So basicly you got these two uses for organs, one desperatly needed and the other... well I don't really give a rats butt if the other can get organs or not.
The root of the problem goes something like this.
It is not legal to charge for organs.
I cannot legally sell you a human heart for $50.
But....
I can legally charge you for services related to delivering the heart to you. I can charge you fees for paperwork, fees for transportation, you name it. As long as there isn't a line that says 'human heart = $50' it is on the up and up.
So there is profit, and plenty of it in organ donations (now I bet you are beginning to see why I have no moral problem with paying the family of the deceased).
So the Hospitals have a good reason to do everything they can to help along organ donations, they profit.
Now there are companies that act like 'clearing houses' for organs. I read about a company in New Jersey that has hundereds of freezers full of human bones waiting to be purchased. These companies actually take care of the organ harvesting. They put the people on life support AFTER DEATH IS DECLARED. They do it until they can get a team in to get the organs out. They handle transportation, they handle storage.
The final link in the chain is who gets the organs.
Is it a surgeon or a cosmetic surgeon?
Guess who has more money to throw around?
One of the reasons there is not enough skin to go around for skin grafts is because cosmetic surgeons are buying all of it all up. Hospitals, doctors and insurance companies only have so much money to throw at this, but cosmetic surgeons, well it is the nature of the beast.
I want to see a way to gaurentee that my organs go to people who need it.
As it stands there is no gaurentee.
You know, I have a VERY dear friend and former housemate who, at the age of 21, had a kidney transplant. He was more than half dead--about 75% dead, in fact--but now unless you read his medic alert bracelet you'd NEVER KNOW. He has since gone on to work in private industry, teach me how to party, go back to finish his degree, and to be one of the most wonderful people I know. I still thank my lucky stars that he got a donor and a match.
yellowcat ^_^ ??
LifeSharers offers a very compelling trade. You give up your organs after you die, when they aren't any use to you. You get a better chance of getting an organ if you ever need one. It could literally mean the difference between life and death. Like I said, a pretty compelling trade. http://www.lifesharers.com/enroll.htm
Put my organs under the GPL...
From the posts that I have read (about halfway down) it seems like everybody is making the assumption that everybody that needs and organ will be old enough to know. This just isn't true. At the age of 12 I had to have a kidney transplant, and while I was in hospital there were other kidney transplant into children much younger then I was at the time. A child of 4-5 doesn't know that they need an organ, and they are much too young to donate anything. I think the best idea is to have a list of people who need a transplant. This list would not be set in stone, for example if someone that is #20 on the list suddenly NEEDS an organ now, they could be bumped up, and obviously if the #1 person on the list needs and lung, and # 4 person needs a lung, and they have different blood type, and a lung with the right blood type for #4 comes up they shouldn't wait just because they are #4, they would go ahead and do the transplant. This is what happens in Canada now. Different lists for different organs too.
This idea is viscerally satifying this moment, but wrongheaded nonetheless. What if no other registered donors need your fresh organ? Just let it rot away while some non-donor needs it?
My blog can kick your blog's ass
~~~
This is a good idea, but like most of the ideas for increasing organ donation rates it requires legislative action. The people who are dying waiting for organs can't wait for government action. A better way to encourage organ donation is to put organ donors at the front of the line if they ever need an organ. That's what LifeSharers does.
Lots of wonderful organizations have spent millions of dollars a year for the last 20 years on educational efforts to raise organ donation rates. All we've got to show for it is an organ shortage that gets larger every year. If education worked it would have worked already. We need to try something new, for the sake of the people dying on the waiting list. LifeSharers is worth a shot. You can join at http://www.lifesharers.com/enroll.htm
Lets see... I need a kidney who is on my list =)
Why not offer more funding to cloning of organs so we don't have the ethical and physical problems that come with organ donors.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Lots of very promising research is ongoing, but it won't pay off for years or even decades. In the mean time, every 90 minutes somebody dies in the United States waiting for an organ transplant. The quickest way to end the organ shortage is to increase the number of people who are willing to donate their organs. LifeSharers does that.
ya I think that's the point. Key word "no other registered donors need your fresh organ". Imagine if everybody was registered. Now it doesn't sound so bad does it, to let an organ "rot away" when nobody needs it?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
"Is this a great way to reward people for being generous with their unused body parts --"
And without thinking about it, thousands of Slashdot visitors simultaneously cross their legs.
"Derp de derp."
Sure they can. AIDS patients can donate to other AIDS patients.
testing out my trending skills
The answers to your questions are so obvious, I'm half expecting the "YHBT"...
If we didn't have so many lawyers involved in the Biotech community, we would HAVE growable organs NOW, and very much less ethical considerations in who to hack up and why.
:-)
Besides, you may be able to live with a donated organ, but donor patients are soon wishing they were dead with the medical bills which they will have to pay for the rest of thier lives, the enourmous health problems associated with depressed immune systems, and the Frankenstein like chemical cocktails they pump into your body to prevent rejection. Many of these chemicals, are poorly understood how and why they work.
Besides, which brings up another point I frequently make. Why would any private medical company EVER want to cure ANYTHING?
Think about it, it IS NOT profitable to cure people. I mean, if you cold grow someone a liver from their own genes they are cured!
What is the profit in that? I would concentrate on doing better transplants, so I could sell people all kinds of drugs, and tons of extra medical care for a transplanted liver.
Not only that, they have to keep buying the drugs from you for the rest of thier lives!!
If they can't pay they die!
Profit or else, or else if you refuse to pay, you die. What a concept!
I think I will patent the idea.
But since only 1 or 2 companies can work in in this area of growing organs, due to patents, it is going to take a very long time indeed before we see any organs you can grow.
(i.e. Most of the handful working working on this problem are idiots, and pretty slow learners as well, I am afraid.)
Besides, like I said, there is now way a board of directors is going to allow growing organs from ones own tissues....it doesn't make good business sense...for the masses anyway.
Now, if your that very rich person on that board, well, of course you can grow your own organs.
I use to work in Biotech and I can tell you the stuff that is considered in closed rooms, shut from public eyes, would make the slashdot audience roll thier eyes in disbelief.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I know this is hard for you money-grubbing Americans to understand, but in other parts of the world we believe that there are non-economic advantages to having a university education.
For example, it may make you a better citizen. Most university degree programs require the student to display some amount of critical thinking skills -- the hope is that this will prevent people from voting for people like Bush. University degree holders often have hobbies other than watching reality television and have even been known to produce societal benefits in their time off.
If university educations were just for getting ahead, then why don't we multilaterally agree to stop going to university and we can all save ourselves some time and money? At the very least, we might be able to keep asshats like you out of the classroom.
Dude, if the donated kidney is just going to get destroyed all over again, what's the point of wasting it on them? If the patient has a disease such that every organ in the body is being destroyed, then why not just put them out of their misery and implant their brainwaves in a giant robot?
"If you want to be eligible to receive transplanted organs should you ever need them, you must be a registered organ donor."
Except I'd imagine a lot of the people who need organs don't have much in the way of usable organs themselves. Or are we so desparate that we'll take organs from smoking alchoholics?
The problem today is that people are living longer and longer, effectively running their organs into the ground. Most people who die today either have a disease too wacky for them to be donors or most of their organs have already failed long ago. The better a medical system gets, the less people you have dying from something so trivial that their organs are still working. (Take Star Trek: how many of the redshirts left enough of a corpse for harvesting?)
It's time that our society got over its antiquated ethical qualms and let bioengineering catch up with medicine. You don't need donated organs if you can just clone your own, now do you? Personally I refuse to donate organs in order to incrase demand and thereby increase the financial benefit to companies working on alternatives.
Parents can enroll their children in LifeSharers.
My question is... what about kids? At what age do we decide that they can make their own decisions about transplants? Can their parents decide for them? There was a young (I think 5-year-old) boy around here who just had a heart transplant recently. Would it have been ethical to deny him that heart because he's not of age to decide to donate?
As good as an organ-sharing system may sound, I think that the only way organ donations will increase is if someone works out an incentive plan. Given how few people think that something bad might happen to them, how likely is this group to make much of a difference?
Besides, personally, I have a hard time with giving organs preferentially to altruistic people. They should go to the ones who need them the most, no matter how appealing it might be to reserve them for other nice folks.
As for religious objections to organ donation... I don't know of any religions that believe you should refuse to donate organs but that will happily allow acceptance of them, so these people are hardly abusing the system - no matter how "dumbass" you think their beliefs are.
~ Leilah
Okay. Explain why at least one study showed organ doners had poorer survival rates in ERs? Hmm?
A doctor here in MA left a patient OPEN on the operating room table so he could run to the bank to cash a check. Doctors regularly take freebies from drug companies. I've personally witnessed a doctor(with a full waiting room) spent 15 minutes talking to a drug company rep(who came to hand out notepads etc.) All this stuff about doctors being so moral is a bunch of complete and utter bullshit, and I'm personally not willing to take the chance that a donor card will mean I'm not leaving the ER alive.
Please help metamoderate.
Not to donate anything,
To donate specific organs only,
To donate any organs/tissues for transplant, or
To donate any organs/tissues for transplant and/or research
If you're really concerned about this, just choose option b and list off what you are willing to give. Heck, some places may allow you to specify organs or tissues only for non-cosmetic transplants.
While I applaud the general idea of sticking to your moral principles, I have a hard time viewing a decision to not donate any of your organs to anyone as being "the good fight".
~ Leilah
in 5 - 10 years they will be growing replacements from the patients bone marrow.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I have been a potential organ donor since I turned 18 and could legally become one. Not that science has progressed far enough to really make organ transplants a magical cure for failing organs since you still have to take immune suppressors for the rest of your life and are often left with an ugly scar. I think those immune suppressors are pretty nasty...
Having said that, if I needed an organ I think I'd take the scar and the pills rather than die. I have friends that are CNAs and they tell lots of horror stories, one of which is what happens to you if you choose to discontinue dialasis. You basically dissolve on the bed in a matter of weeks until death mercifully takes you.
The ability to transplant organs also brings up ethical problems for donors and recipients. If you have type 2 diabetes and failing kidneys do you accept your overweight kid's left kidney knowing they will probably come down wih diabetes later in life and need all the kidney they can get? Do you buy them a life insurance policy so that young family of theirs will have some means of support when no kidney is available for them?
I'd sign up for this program except for the following problems:
Will being on this list keep you off the 'real list'? While it isn't fair for people to get organs who wouldn't donate them, the proprietors organize the 'real' list based on need. They might consider that you don't 'need' the transplant as much as someone that is not on this organ donor community list because you would still have a chance for an organ if they move your name down the list while someone else would have no other recourse. A child however who is not able to join this list legally and who can't be expected to think about such things ( a kidnerdgartener for instance ) is a different story.
The other problem is the reason health insurers don't pay for pre existing conditions. If someone needs a liver, then maybe they'll put themselves on themselves off the list. People in need with no intention of contributing would be able to leach.
There are people who believe they need all their body parts to be resurected properly on the afterlife. IMO, this is stupid since if God can bring a decayed skeleton back to life, he ought to be able to miracle some lost flesh or organs out of something God's s'posed to be omnipotent after all. Maybe he could use some sand or one of Marilyn Manson's missing ribs. (Maybe I'd donate a rib if it meant I could suck my own dick in the afterlife - ahh the pleasures of being AnonymousCoward! )
These people are entitled to their belifs but those ( selfish in this case ) beliefs come with consequences. They shouldn't be subsidised by the organs of the rest of us.
Most ppl never get around to it. Those states that let you put it on your drivers license are half way there. It's not something most ppl think about, but many answer yes if it is asked as part of the routine of getting a license.
By the RIAA. "Large numbers of children and teens are swapping their organs over the... um... Internet and this is bad for the people who created the organs in the first place," says an RIAA spokesperson, "Parents are encouraged to do the right thing by stopping organwapping, with a firm spanking of what ever part of the child they can get their hands on. Or we'll sue them. Yeah."
The RIAA is also marketing a line of children which are "watermarked" so as to "spoil" their organs, causing the organs to be rejected by the people recieving them.
That is like saying if you don't vote you waive your bill of rights. Many recipients of organ donation are children. Children in America are not responsible for entering contracts such as the organ donation program and it would be ludicrous to assume they would. The same goes for the sick and poor which would be likely candidates for donation that may not sign up as donors for obvious reasons.
We aren't a socialist state yet but at least we're human.
I personally believe the organ donation program is a good thing for extreme cases such as birth defects and rare genetic diseases. But in general organ transplants breed irresponsibility in a nation of increasingly poorer health. Smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day and if you pay your insurance you get a double lung transplant by the time you're 40. It might cost $2 million that someone else has to pay but you get to breathe again for a few thousand in insurance premiums. Or maybe eat butter and french fries and then get a heart transplant with your quadruple bypass? Drink a case of beer every day with your bottle of whiskey and you get a liver transplant? Eat and live right and stop relying on insurance and "miracle" medicine to save your ass from irresponsible living at the last minute.
So, how to fix it?
- Third, stop preventing people from bidding on the open market to buy organs from donors.
I say "stop preventing" very deliberately here. The problem is not what people should be "allowed" to do, as if the default were slavery. The problem is the state acting as though it owned your body, live and, especially, dead. It steals the opton to make a personal gain, and then scratches its head at the shortage of people willing to give freebies. It should just get the hell out of the way. Then, normal market forces will expand donorship - and provide a natural incentive for companies to develop cloned in-vitro organs.Needless to say, every "solution" that is based on forcing donors will fail dismally. People will opt for cremation, or travel abroad to die. Nobody loves a thief, and especially not a grave-robber.
This is not a troll. This is not flamebait. I mean every word.
A regular organ donor gives "the gift of life". What is Lifeshares? The "quid pro quo" of life?? Pardon me while I snicker at the supposed generosity of their donation. It is exclusory. It is petty and churlish.
It's a profound change in the moral thinking behind organ donorship. It is putting a proprietary license on your body tissue.
Yes, I have strong feelings on the subject. Less than one month ago, my father-in-law received a kidney transplant. A mere month ago, for 3 days a week he spent more than 1/2 of his waking hours connected to dialysis. Today, he has one donated kidney running at 60% function. That is profoundly life changing. No more dialysis. He can spend significant time with his grandchildren again, do meaningful work again, have a life again. The petty greed of these lifetraders could have denied him that.
Instead of this silly scheme, just make organ donation the default. Instead of assuming that you're not an organ donor, the doctors can assume that you ARE an organ donor. I know that there are religious reasons not to be a donor, but for most people, who cares? It's not like you're going to come back for your spleen later.
Mind you, I sincerely hope that when I go, by the time all the donations are done, there's nothing left to go into the box.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I think that this is funny, because I appreciate the way that you find creative ways of saying old things. The fact that some words make us think, in order to understand the message, only helps.
Side note: I disagree with the main point, but I still appreciate your word choices.
testing out my trending skills
This makes donated organs like GPLed software: You share it expecting it to return to the community.
They generally had cast iron plates on one corner of the building (the one closest to the street usually) and the main fireplace of the building if it had one, with the sigil of the "company". Part of the reason why the departments are called "company" IIRC.
I'm not quite clear on what makes organ sales for transplant more like "subscription-only fire service" than every other service for sale in the US health care system. =)
But, maybe it's not just the user paying more for faster organ delivery that bothers people; maybe they're concerned about this combined with relatively fixed, inelastic, organ supply. (I'm sure there's a quality pun in there somewhere, but I'm to tired to figure it out right now.)
I'm not sure if the number of organs available is really fixed; Signing that organ donor card might be much easiers if there was a cash reward involved. Of course, it would probably need to be up front...
"It is my express wish that my organs and tissue be donated only to members of Bill Gates's family, unless no family member is a suitable match. For each part of my body donated, I designate as donee that Bill Gates's family member who is the most suitable match as defined by the criteria in general use at the time of my death."
What do drug reps have to do with organ donation? I have attended drug rep meetings (my father is a doctor; he even teaches at some of these meetings). These aren't secret practices or anything; it wasn't through some great accident that you were able to witness something that was not on the up-and-up.
I don't see how meetings and freebies reguarding medications == conspiracy to kill off ER patients.
Doctors keep telling me that the main reason for organ-shortage is not the evil families or the dead who want to keep their organs but the doctor who refuses to ask the family whether he might take the organs.
After all, imagine you are standing in front of a family that is sobbing and crying and you have somewho to ask whether it is okay to take the organs...
Sure they can. AIDS patients can donate to other AIDS patients.
There's a little more to it than that. The HIV virus has several (many?) different strains; cross-infecting an individual with different strains would be A Very Bad Thing.
However, if a given AIDS patient could produce proof that they'd signed their organ donor card prior to infection (or to discovering they were infected), then I'd have no problem whatsoever to posthumously helping them out.
Condoms do break. I've had it happen. (Though not tonight... everything at the bar was skanky tonight. [sigh] Small towns.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This idea is viscerally satifying this moment, but wrongheaded nonetheless. What if no other registered donors need your fresh organ? Just let it rot away while some non-donor needs it?
Which is exactly what would happen if I didn't sign my organ donor card...
It's unpleasant, but so is imagining the doctors harvesting your corneas. Most people will (apparently, based on the number of donors) not do it. Maybe they would if there was something in it for them.
Think about it. Health insurance companies would love it. If you signed your organ donor card, you'd be more likely to get the organs you needed should you fall ill. Therefore, less life support and other healthcare costs when you're in for weekly dialysis or whatever else. Therefore, a break on your insurance costs.
There's another benefit to registering as an organ donor. In Ontario, you get a little sticker to affix to your driver's license (primary ID). When you get pulled over, the cop sees the sticker and most of them have seen enough unpleasantness that they are firm believers in organ donation. I had one tell me that he thought I was generous for a teenager, and that I didn't deserve a speeding ticket. (I was 16 with my freshly minted license and a 1973 Plymouth Duster with a 340-4bbl. He pulled me over for doing 120MPH on an empty freeway in the middle of the night. He'd been sitting on an overpass when I blew past with the exhaust dumps open, and it took him a couple of miles to catch up with me. If I'd had an accident, I'd have been an ideal donor if anything was left in the hamburger meat.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I have donated an organ already, because of that, I get preference over someone who has not.
There are a variety of different factors that go into determining who is eligible to receive an organ. Some are, but not limited to, location, blood type, general health, how quickly can you be ready to recieve the organ when it is availble, etc.
My aunt got lucky one 4th of July several years ago. Some had dies in car accident, me he rest in peace, and was a perfect match for my aunt. My mom was signed up as her back-up contact. Well, the hospital called my home and I happened to anwer. My aunt had an hour to call the hospital and verify that she would be able to make it there within four hours. Let me tell you, we were calling everybody we could think to call. Finally someone thought to call as many radio stations that we could get a hold of in the area. We had to call my aunt's nurse back and the nurse had to call the radio stations. My aunt called the hospital with less than 15 minutes before the organ went to some else.
And as several people have already pointed out,
if you need an organ, there would be no way you could ever donate because of all the anti-rejection drugs you have to take.
Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly. Jeebus, does everything have to revolve around the exception? The OP has a good idea, and this contrived monkey-wrench is just plain silly.
I guess this will be modded down because, well, it's not politically correct or sensitive. But it would take considerably more effort (and be much more potentially enlightening to those like me who sincerely don't know why we should care) to argue why this idea should be in any way hampered by the exceedingly minor exception of HIV-infected donors/recipients. Please, help me understand.
everything in moderation
I don't share the same completely dim view of Biotech as you - at least in the sense of the time scale involved. It does seem to take the occasional brave leap forward by a company to "embarrass" some others into making a leap, other times there just happens to be profit in finding something more effective, more 'humane', with less side effects.
A combination of such things helped us progress forward in antidepressants, from monoamine oxidase inhibitors through tricyclics to SSRIs that can be prescribed by almost any practitioner (the book "The Synaptic Self" by Joseph Ledoux has a pretty good history on the subject)
That said, there always seems to be a cycle of 15-20 years from seeing something in a research paper/science magazine to seeing them come to fruition for the sake of humans, some of which I'm sure is related to IP issues, which are tougher to fault in medicine; there's more expense involved, and no direct equivalent of an open source movement :)
New-grown organs will make their way out of the lab slowly, but surely. Techniques with simple tissues, like skin,are already available. More complex multi-tissued organs that have to approximate embryonic growth patterns, kidneys for example, have had some success in animals, including pigs, but the age of the cells used for growth are really important at the moment.
There are two endeavors that will really help out the cause: telomerase research, which is one of the means to 'immortalize' cells - just read of some interesting advances in New Scientist where they've managed to immortalize a human muscle cell line with a hijacked retrovirus. This isn't a good option for most tissues, because it can make benign tumor growths keep growing, so they're trying the same experiment with adenoviruses instead for a 'one shot' version of the same effect.
The other is the nascent science of unravelling histone tails and their meanings. Histones are the spools around which DNA is wrapped. The histone 'tails' appear to determine what parts of the DNA get read/ignored/transcribed at any one time, and is one means outside of the DNA to control protein synthesis. Cracking this code could help us understand what makes a stem cell a stem cell, and how histone tails might indicate whether a cell is a neuron, or a liver cell or what have you. It could also indicate why we've had some trouble with cloning (the DNA doesn't change, but the histone code does). Organ growing is akin to cloning on a limited basis, and often requires identical, less specialized or stem cell versions of the tissue you wish to generate.
One interesting fallout of organs grown this way - applied often enough until the technology gets cheap, and you have an interesting alternative to getting meat from animals.
That wouldn't be utopia, mind you. If there's a 'cheaper, more humane way' to get meat, we could lose some farm species. Not to mention that the 'vat meat' might be too uniform, get infected, and would constantly have to be screened for tumors :)
Something to think about :)
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
Granted, I'm just talking about another layer of obscurity. But there's something to the idea that if it's not written down, it's a LOT harder to find.
Simply make it clear to your spouse/family/loved ones/maybe even your lawyer that if you are irrecoverably brain-dead, you want them to donate your organs. But skip the doner card, don't get that sticker on your license, in fact, don't have this particular desire written down ANYWHERE. Just have it be a fact that the people you trust know themselves.
This way, your trusted/loved ones themselves have to be in on the organlegging scheme. And if THAT's the case, the fact that they're willing and anxious to throw you to the wolves, when you're at your most vulnerable, probably means that they're looking for, and will find, a way to off you anyway.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Here in the UK we have this weird system called the NHS, where taxpayers pay for the health service and everyone gets medical treatment for free. We're so crazy over here you know, offering healthcare to poor people.
If your going to make human organs into a marketable commodity, how about foreign organ harvesting? Why keep it in an internal market when you could combine Americas largest export: war, to create organ imports!
I don't know much about modern warfare and how people are killed but surely there must be _some_ suitable organs from each war? No? well how about getting 3rd world countries to donate them? Assuming they are not AIDs ridden, im sure they would be fine - hell it works with cheap labor shoe factories.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly. Jeebus, does everything have to revolve around the exception? The OP has a good idea, and this contrived monkey-wrench is just plain silly.
I am the OP. :) I don't suggest any special exceptions for HIV infected individuals. They're obviously unsuitable donors, and the reply was asking me about that.
If they signed the card before becoming infected, then they obviously intended to help out and be a part of the organ transplant system. With that in mind, then they should benefit fron an idea that they bought into before they were sick.
Similarly, it would be a little late when you're on the waiting list for a kidney to be signing your organ donor card.
Besides, if I needed an organ, I wouldn't care if it came from a midget drag queen IV drug user, as long as it was disease free, functional and a close match. A liver or a cornea won't change your sexual orientation or even cause an inexplicable desire to listen to the Village People.
I guess this will be modded down because, well, it's not politically correct or sensitive. But it would take considerably more effort (and be much more potentially enlightening to those like me who sincerely don't know why we should care) to argue why this idea should be in any way hampered by the exceedingly minor exception of HIV-infected donors/recipients. Please, help me understand.
Wouldn't be hampered at all:
"Sir, it seems that you need a kidney. While you're HIV-infected, your T-cell count is still good. Now, if you can produce proof that you were an organ donor before discovering that you were HIV infected, we'll put you on the transplant waiting list."
I think also that the small number of organs "wasted" (using that word because I sense you feel that way) to terminally ill patients would be more than offset by the increase in donations across the board, resulting in a net increase in the availability of tissues. If you were to start refusing to allow transplants to people who didn't have any pre-existing conditions when they signed their organ donation agreements, you'd undermine the public's faith in the fairness of such a system. (Think of a health insurance company that refused to renew the policy you'd paid into for 20 years when you're diagnosed with prostate cancer...)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
If no other registered donors need your organs, then they go to people who haven't registered to be donors. The last thing a donor wants is for his/her organs to go to waste.
Everybody has something somebody else can use. And some people ARE so desparate they would take organs from smoking alcoholics, because the alternative is death.
LifeSharers lets parents enroll their minor children.
Only about 30% of Americans have agreed to donate their organs when they die. The other 70% have not, yet they get 70% of the organs that are transplanted. If they're leeches, then there are already enough leeches to go around.
You'd have to come up with a fair formula
You don't need a formula unless there is a shortage. If you had to be a donor to get an organ, then just about everybody would sign up and the shortage would disappear. Even the leeches would get organs if they need one. LifeSharers helps reduce the organ shortage, and that saves lives.
Hence the obligatory Tienanmen joke:
"Remember that dude in Tienanmen square who stood in front of the tank? Damn, he had balls! Wish I had balls like that!"
"Well, as the next best thing, my Grandpa's got his liver!" :-)
...who was once as tall and handsome as you and now lies vegetating in bed, kept alive by machines.
One must take such (all?) statistics with a large sack of salt, specially if the method is not disclosed. Pendind this, I would offer an interpretation: an official declaration that the patient's brain is dead is only necessary if the person is a donor and if this fact is relevant.
If you are in a hospital that is not an active transplant center and there is no safe way available to keep your organs usable and to move them to a place where a transplant can be carried out, there is little point in declaring you brain-dead. You will die of "multiple organ failure" soon enough.
As for non-donors, it is common for the family to insist on keeping the a brain-dead patient "technically" alive until they manage to convince themselves that the person won't come back. And again, the cause of death will be respiratory or heart failure, after the machines are turned off.
In both cases, the brain-death declaration is not necessary, so why would the doctors bother to state it?
If people want to create groups where those within are preferential in line for body-part donations, then so be it. And so what if people want to sell their body parts (e.g., kidneys) while alive, or when dead, at market-price? One life is as valuable as another -- there is nothing particularly noble about saving the life of a poor person over a rich one, nor vica versa. The point is that a person's body is his or her own, and only s/he should decide what is done with it and in what manner, while alive and when dead. If, after I die, I want to sell my body parts to the highest bidder (so as to increase the estate that will be passed on to my heirs), then so be it. If I want it to be designated that they must go to a poor person in need of them, then so be it. If I want to designate that they can only go to an Indian, then so be it. I could also designate who they can't go to, and make a long long list (e.g., criminals and those I don't like).
Consider this scenario. If two people are on the verge of drowning, I only have enough time to save one. Now, under the law, I don't have to save either. I'm not required to do anything to help them. Now, obviously I have a choice to make. I may make it based on several criteria, but however I choose is irrelevant -- one person is going to die, another is going to live.
1. I choose to try to save the thinnest person, who I am most likely to be able to drag out of the water.
2. If they are two women, maybe I save the most attractive one.
3. If one of them is my friend/family member, maybe I save him or her.
4. If one of them is my enemy, maybe I save the other person.
5. If I know one of them to be more intelligent than the other, maybe I save that one.
6. If I know one of them to be loved and cared about by more people than the other, then maybe I save that one.
7. If one of them is offering me a million dollars to save him or her, maybe I save that one*. Hell, I could choose by any other material or immaterial thing they were offering me.
* Though the person may honor the verbal contract, it is unlikely to be held up in court, as it constitutes contract at gunpoint.
8. Maybe I choose randomly.
and so on and so forth. The point is, there are many criterion by which we judge. I may not even judge consciously. As far as the law and Constitution is concerned, regarding our right to life, we all have equal share in that right, and are all equal as persons to be bestowed rights. However, let's not pretend that we -- as individuals -- don't make judgements everyday about who's life and happiness is more important to us.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Also, how bad is it? I mean if another strain would mean death in 4 years @ the earliest, but the infected organ would guarantee @ least another 3 years, then I don't understand the problem.
Also, are there incurable diseases that are worth having? I figure that some people would do anything to live, & since they have any infection of their own, then they shouldn't be worrying too much if the donated organ has a "small" disease. I would rather just die.
testing out my trending skills
When you apply for a driving licence you should be given the opportunity to be added as an organ donar. That way, if you're carrying your driving licence on you at the time of death (something I keep in my wallet all the time) then your organs will be donated.
You see, I can't be bothered carrying around loads of cards with me. However the driving licence is usefull because it acts as ID so I carry it on me.
Well, this system already exists and is what happens here in the UK, and probably right across the EU.
My son was stillborn in April of this year (8.5 months) and my wife and I wanted to donate his body to science. We were not able to because of some abortion law... Yet we were required to file a death certificate and have a funeral home handle the services.
Where is our separation of church and state?
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
or a scary flashback to how early 'subscription-only' fire departments worked?
I live in Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. All of the suburban fire departments are volunteer.
I don't know if this is just a local urban legend, but when I was in 6th grade our teacher (who lived in the same suburb as I did at the time) told us a story that supposedly happened in the 60's or 70's about a stingy rich person who refused to donate EVERY TIME the local volunteer fire department was looking for money and when her house caught on fire they came to her block and sprayed water on her next door neighbor's houses to make sure that the fire didn't spread, but they all refused to risk their lives for a person who didn't donate to their cause.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why not use the prisoners that are full of shame and have hurt society?
Because man! We'd all end up with vengeful hearts or kidneys that turn us into killer zombies!
No sig for you!!
Unfortunately U.S. law does not recognize the obvious fact that a person owns his or her own body. This should be fixed. Ownership of one's body should be recognized as one of the most inalienable rights. Maybe we need a constitutional amendment.
Healthcare for poor people? That's just plumb weird. All I can say is I'd hate to get injured playing football and have to...
What? You call what "football"?
Forget it. I give up.
<\can't resist>
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Interesting debate I read about recently (based on a true story from the UK).
A racist family agreed to allow organ donation from a family member if - and only if, the doctors promised to give the organs to white recipients.
Nasty case, but the ethics committee decide to agree to the request as some (white) person would benefit, and in this particular case any non-white recipients would be no worse off anyway (as nobody would get the organs if they didn't agree).
Things like organ donations makes for difficult ethical decisions. For me its easy - I ride a motorbike, am atheist - and am a donor.
It seems that the Spanish organ transplant organization is one of the most succesful in the world. It still doesn't cover every need, though. Young healthy Spanish bikers, wear no helmet!
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Might I point out that every time there is an organ transplant, the hospitals and the doctors do make a large profit.
So if you allow death penalty donation, you're going to have an industry that profits from it. Even if it's a government agency that does all the organ transplants, government agencies profit in the form of increased power for their directors.
As I understand it, China already does this, and it is a huge problem. They apparently do execute prisoners for their organs.
Nor can you say "well, the medical profession won't be corrupt." In my grandfather's generation, the AMA successfully lobbied our Congress for a set of laws, which when combined with medical school practices, artificially holds down the number of doctors to keep doctor salaries high. That's corruption, resulting in needless deaths. Indeed, since most illnesses are not a big problem if caught early, that move by the AMA may be a large cause of increased need for organs.
Anyhow, I too do not intend to donate my organs. I've considered the issue, and though I generally consider donating blood to be pro-life, I consider organ donation to usually be the opposite. I *would* donate blood if I could (I got a false positive for non-A,non-B hepatitis, when I donated on too little sleep once).
On the other hand, my wife used to donate blood, and I encouraged her not to do so any more. She has a mitral valve prolapse, and the Red Cross took her blood too often, knowing that it was dangerous, and caused some additional damage to her heart. But I guess they have their quotas. Point being, even the Red Cross is not above some forms of corruption.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
That's how it works. With transplants becoming basically a way to extend life... people kept demanding more organs. Since the idea of being chopped into parts freaked people out, crime decreased, which resulted in lesser crimes being upgraded to a "death via dissassemblement" in order to keep the organ banks up.
Just finished reading the book Flatlander: The collected tales of Gil "the Arm" Hamilton.. It covers the organleggers in a lot of detail (Gil being a cop assigned to hunting 'leggers), and is a great read
A 120mph crash in a '73 duster doesn't leave anything to donate. :)
:) A two mile a minute head start on him should have been insurmountable. Even if he was driving a 69 Polara 440 pursuit and we give him only a minute to react and then reach it's top speed of 147 mph. Your now two miles ahead and he's only catching up at less than half a mile a minute. Going to take him at least five minutes to catch you. A Crown Vic (128 mph) would have taken 12 minutes.
:D
And only a couple miles, what did you do, let up on the gas?
Kids these days, no sense of adventure
Charming how you conflate "HIV infected" and "homosexual", you fscking bigot.
Clearly there can be no helping you understand anything.
just to put a hole in your bubble of preconceptions:
for religious, ethical and humanistic reasons, I will not accept an organ donation. However, because I also believe than my flesh is not my property, I have signed a donor card.
I may believe that it is wrong to accept another's organs, but I do not impose that faith on others.
So, since I will allow the use of organs from my dead flesh, but will not accept another's organs to save my life; will you, under your system, allow another to claim the credit I have earned but will never use?
We'd also have to think about how children get registered. I don't know the numbers but I'm sure a fair amount of organ donations and recipients are children who would not be of age to consent.
JoAnn
You don't have to be politically correct or sensitive, but actually knowing about the situation might help you when you're trying to make a point. Half of the new HIV infections around the world are in people under 25, and of the teens becoming infected, the majority are girls. Of the 4.2 million new infections this year, 2 million are women. Of the 38.6 million total infected adults alive today, 19.2 million are women. You systematically categorize homosexuals and IV drug users are the only people infected with HIV, when these days, even in the US, its spread is breaches all social categories and is especially prevalent on college campuses among young women. The gist of your comment (which I take to be that political concern over what to do about HIV infected people who need or can give organs should not stop the idea proposed from being used) is fine as a standalone without stereotyping who gets infected. Obviously unprotected anal sex (the majority of anal sex is practiced between men and women, as an aside) and sharing needles are really good ways of getting infected, but imagining the risk is completely limited to people involved in those activities is wearing blinders to the depth of the problem. There is no need to go out of your way to be politically incorrect and insensitive, which is what you did. Why people are infected is irrelevant. Yet you went out of your way to categorize infected individuals as either homosexual or as IV drug users. Its not as though you stood up and said something politically incorrect when it was pertinent and accurate, you went out of your way to ADD that unnecessarily. Replace "homosexuals/IV drug users" in your comment with "HIV infected people," remove your assumption it will be modded down, and you have a virtually IDENTICAL comment, pose the same question, and do it in less words. I'm tired of people going out of their way to say politically incorrect things, then saying they'll be "modded down" or somehow else persecuted for it.
Cite your sources or fuck off; we all know HIV/AIDS is primarily a gay / IV drug user problem -- manufacturing bogus stats and/or wishful thinking isn't going to change that. Note, I said primarily, not exclusively, so relax and try to back up your highly-suspect claims before you go off again.
Hell, breast cancer isn't limited to women, some men get it too, but you don't hear anyone whining about how terrible it is that we all "assume all breast cancer victims are women", nor should you. Because, for all practical purposes breast cancer is a problem for women. Similarly, AIDS/HIV is a problem for people who share needles and participate in the sorts of sex that result in tissue tearing and blood exchange. There, you can connect the dots yourself -- better?
everything in moderation
Hello? News-flash: I didn't conflate "HIV infected" and "homosexual", nature did. Take it up with her. You're barking up the wrong tree.
BTW, acknowledging something that others wish were not true, but is, is not bigotry. It's honesty. Try it, it's refreshing.
everything in moderation
First, how many sources you cite for it being a gay/IV drug user problem? None? Then take your own advice and FUCK OFF. It's not like they're hard to find, but I guess since "everyone knows" you don't have to cite. Your original post never said it was "primarily a gay/IV drug user problem." You said: "Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly." I'm not arguing about the easiest ways to spread it, I'm only saying that its no longer limited by any such barriers, its everywhere, right now, and the next person any of us sleeps with might be infected. If motivated, one could find the EXACT stats I gave you in well under 5 minuets on google. For your enlightenment, check out the center for diseases control statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.htm#exposure Copied from the page: International Statistics According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, as of the end of 2002, the following trends of the worldwide epidemic (or pandemic) of HIV are evident: * Today, 42 million people are estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS. Of these, 38.6 million are adults. 19.2 million are women, and 3.2 million are children under 15. * An estimated 5 million people acquired the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2002, including 2 million women and 800,000 children under 15. * During 2002, AIDS caused the deaths of an estimated 3.1 million people, including 1.2 million women and 610,000 children under 15. * Women are becoming increasingly affected by HIV. Approximately 50%, or 19.2 million, of the 38.6 million adults living with HIV or AIDS worldwide are women. For current statistics on the number of reported AIDS cases in North, Central, and South America, please contact the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) which is the regional office for the Americas of the World Health Organization at 525 23rd Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037, telephone: 202-861-4346. Infection should be an issue of concern to every sexually active individual in the world. HIV is spreading rapidly outside of these two categories, even in the US. You also made no comment about how mention of gay people /IV drug users was not even necessary for your comment, which was probably the most important part of my entire comment.
I'm sorry, were we talking about sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where organ transplants are pure fantasy and I failed to notice? You have my apologies. See, more than 20.8 million of those cases you cite are down there where the men think condoms are evil, raping virgins cures AIDS, and any kind of vaginal lubrication whatsoever spoils the wonderful dry sex feel. Almost as good for tearing tissue as anal sex. Or a needle.
Oh and, no, you're right, I did not cite sources. I thought my casual remark reflected pretty general knowledge. But I can, and I will. (And, ironically, you cited one for me. See below.)
Only 860,000 AIDS cases (adults and children) were in the US in 1997 when the world total was about 31 million (it's 42 million in your reference), feel free to scale up if you like, but the point remains that AIDS populations in the 3rd world are vastly different than in industrialized nations. BTW, those international numbers seem suspect, especially since they don't give any info on how this "estimation" takes place in places where you can't even get AIDS drugs in without them being stolen and sold at a profit in Europe. Note that there are many pages on who.org and who.int that do explain the estimation procedure for the US, such as the one I mentioned, but the point is we're not talking about world AIDS, we're talking about AIDS in places where organs are transplanted with some reasonable level of frequency, so we'll use your own referenced site, but a different table on the page to see what we can learn about how people get AIDS. OK?
CATEGORY MEN WOMEN TOTAL*
Men who have sex with men 368,971 - 368,971
Injecting Drug Use 145,750 55,576 201,326
Men who have sex with men and inject drugs 51,293 - 51,293
Hemophilia/coagulation disorder 5,000 292 5,292
Heterosexual contact 32,735 57,396 90,131 (riight)
Recipient of blood transfusion, blood components, or tissue 5,057 3,914 8,971
Risk not reported or identified 57,220 23,870 81,091
(Hilariously, the * is marked on TOTAL with this note below the table: Includes 3 persons whose sex is inknown. (sic) Inknown? That crazy W.H.O.!)
Now, let's take what we learned from the table above, which comes from your own referenced source page, and get back to the thing that really irritated you: my claim that most people get HIV/AIDS from gay sex or IV drug use. Now, keep in mind that we only have the sufferers's words to go on, and I'm guessing some people with AIDS/HIV will lie about how they might have caught it either way for whatever reason. I'm pretty sure that more lie by saying they had no gay sex or IV drug use than the other way around, but let's ignore that and accept the word of the sufferers at face value.
So, we'll include the women too (to your advantage, since they can't have gay sex with men), and see that of the nice 800k sample size there, the WHO chart above, your reference now, tells us that 77% of the AIDS/HIV cases are from admitted gay male sex0rs and/or IV drug users. I'm so sorry for assuming AIDS was mostly associated with these behaviors. Why, it's only 77%.
Moreover, IMHO you can throw in the 10% where "no risk was reported" and get it up to a cool 87% without any serious fight from anyone. I'd also bet some fraction of the 2% claiming medical (transfusion or hemo disorder) and the 11% calling straight-sex only are being less-than-honest to save the family some misery, but let's leave them alone. According to your W.H.O. source, 77-87% of everyone with AIDS reported that they had gay male sex, used IV drugs, or both, or refused to comment.
Finally, because I want to be done with you and cease this
everything in moderation
NIH Statistics
.7% of the population)... does that mean that we should all be in prison?
New Infections
70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population
30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
For a grand total of 33%, or fully one-third of new HIV/AIDS cases in America. Since there are anywhere between 10 and 20 times as many heterosexuals than homosexuals in America, odds are that the more and more heterosexual people are going to be getting HIV before things get any better.
If I read the statistics that you are using correctly, they are cumulative. In that case, your results are numerically correct, but misleading. According to the this page you get your numbers from, more than half of those people are dead. This is repeated in the page where I got my data. This means that new infections are going to considerably skew the dataset of living people with HIV/AIDS.
Your data falls prey to a different problem, also related to the fact that the numbers you use are cumulative: The disease was indeed, at first, being solely contracted by gay men and IV drug users. They had quite a head start, as it were. Any deviation towards a statistic on par with the population distribution of America would take a while. Again, going by new infections alleviates this problem.
I particuarily love this gem (emphasis mine, some removed from original):
I said, and I still do, that people with AIDS, AND people who admitted to gay sex and/or IV drug use would simply be excluded from this program as they are from current organ, blood, plasma, and bone-marrow donor programs.
I can see your point for drug users, since they aren't born drug users, though I certainly disagree they should be banned from recieving organs. However, your banning of gay men from the program is ridiculous. Under your system, a man who is born gay should:
A) Choose to remain celibate their entire life, so that in the event that they need an organ, they can be saved
B) Live normally, and hope they never need an organ, because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.
Don't 'cha love that game? Low risk, but infinite stakes.
Let's look at how many gay men there are in America. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. Let's go with the 10, for the purpose of arguement. There are roughly 292,000,000 people in America according to the US census, so about 29,200,000 gay people. Divide by 2, since gender is pretty well 50/50. 14,600,000 gay men. Let's also assume that everyone is as likely to die of AIDS once they get it. 42.6% of the patients are alive, so there are around 368,971 *.426 = 157,434 gay men with AIDS. That means that 157,434/14,600,000 = 1% of gay men have AIDS.
So you're proposing that all gay men be barred from recieving organs on the basis that 1 out of every 100 might have AIDS, and therefore be ineligible to donate an organ?
Hey, I hear that there are over 2 million people in prison (roughly
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
People with 'dumbass' -- read, legitimate; just because it isn't your religion doesn't mean it is an invalid moral position -- religious objections to donating organs ALSO have religious objections to receiving organs.
*I* object to most organ transplants on purely pragmatic grounds: The technology is not sufficiently mature to be doing mass transplants of organs other than kidneys and corneas. Average post-transplant survival from other organs? Less than five years. And, of those five years, three, on average, are spent in the hospital. Average cost is $2-5 MILLION. Until we can overcome the real problems with rejection in a more uniform way, organ transplant should be strictly experimental, and aimed at curing those problems, UNLESS the individual involved is capable of paying the WHOLE freight him/herself. Otherwise the societal cost is just too much. We need the insurance and tax dollars that are spent on organ transplant to pay for other life-saving medical treatments that will treat / cure MANY more people for the cost of each transplant.
Yawn, OK, whatever, if it were 67% it wouldn't hurt my point at all. But, it's not, it's more, from your own source (NIH):
Of new infections among men in the United States, CDC estimates that approximately 60 percent of men were infected through homosexual sex, 25 percent through injection drug use, and 15 percent through heterosexual sex. Of newly infected men, approximately 50 percent are black, 30 percent are white, 20 percent are Hispanic, and a small percentage are members of other racial/ethnic groups.(4)
Got that? Your reference says new AIDS/HIV infections in men are 85% from gay sex (65%) and/or IV drug use (25%).
I think you're misunderstanding the NIH stats, but it doesn't matter. Even with your interpretation, most people with AIDS (new or old cases, your choice) also have gay sex and/or use IV drugs. That's the insensitive claim for which I was taken to task. It has been demonstrated to be true now twice, with stats from two different sources that were both provded by the people arguing against me. I'm sorry that it's hard to accept that, but it's true. Please stop trying to force reality to come into line with your ideas of what you want it to be.
I can see your point for drug users, since they aren't born drug users, though I certainly disagree they should be banned from recieving organs. However, your banning of gay men from the program is ridiculous. Under your system, a man who is born gay should: A) Choose to remain celibate their entire life, so that in the event that they need an organ, they can be saved B) Live normally, and hope they never need an organ, because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.
Don't 'cha love that game? Low risk, but infinite stakes.
You forgot option C): start your own organ exchange club for people with AIDS or high-risk lifestyles and those who don't mind the idea of thier new liver possibly coming with some free bonus HIV. I'm guessing you really don't love that game -- since it's called Being Accountable For Your Own Decisions. It's not at all popular these days.
And, this line:
because gay people don't deserve those organs, because they engage in high-risk behaviors.
. . . needs to go right back in your ass where it came from. No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise. It DOES however, make an organ donated by a gay man or an IV drug-user worth somewhat less, in trade, than a organ from someone who isn't as likely to have a hard-to-detect infectious fatal disease. And this is exactly the point, since the original story was about an organ donor club that affords priority for donors (as opposed to common programs where your having agreed to be a donor or not doesn't affect the length of the line you wait if you need a transplant). This cute little straw man makes it clear that yo want me to be a homophobe who is against gays in general, but I'm not, and this is totally ruining your attempted argument.
Whether or not one is born gay (and I happen to think so) or becomes gay is irrelevant. Same for IV drug use. Gay sex and IV drug use are strongly correlated with AIDS. Causality is also pretty certain. But, I'm not trying to pick on gays and drug users here -- if people with red hair had a possible (but not completely detectable) virus in their livers that could kill me slowly and painfully if I were to accept a transplant from a red-head, I wouldn't want red-heads in my organ club either. At least not as possible liver donors. Sorry, but them's the breaks -- we're talking about survival, not how to hide pieces of the ugly reality that makes it harder to justify every possible lifestyle and make everyone feel accepted, special, and loved.
Frankly, I'm pretty sure my view is not far from what really happens in the donor club
everything in moderation
My statistics:
New Infections
70% Men, 15% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 10.5% total population
30% Women, 75% contracted from heterosexual conduct = 22.5% total population
Your statistic:
60%+25% = 85%
85% + 15% = 100%. Your statistic does not conflict with mine, in fact it is to be expected if there are only three listed causes for infection. Mine simply addresses the universe of new infections, rather than simply men. This is important, since 22.5% of the new infections comes from heterosexual women.
You neglected to note that I added women, to demonstrate that the disease afflicts more than just gay men or IV users of either gender.
I think you're misunderstanding the NIH stats, but it doesn't matter. Even with your interpretation, most people with AIDS (new or old cases, your choice) also have gay sex and/or use IV drugs. That's the insensitive claim for which I was taken to task. It has been demonstrated to be true now twice, with stats from two different sources that were both provded by the people arguing against me. I'm sorry that it's hard to accept that, but it's true. Please stop trying to force reality to come into line with your ideas of what you want it to be.
66% is a far cry from 100%. That was my, and probably everyone else's, point. HIV/AIDS does not just affect gay men or IV drug users, it affects everybody. As I stated in my previous post, and I note you didn't disagree with it, the population distribution is changing.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise.
Actually, you did. In the post that started this whole mess:
Who cares about homosexuals / IV drug users in this case anyway? They should neither donate organs nor receive them. Obvious-fucking-ly.
As for that line being a straw-man, I disagree. It is a logical corollary from your position. If your position is that gay men should not be able to recieve organs because some of them have HIV/AIDS, it is entirely logical to point out that gay men would no longer deserve to recieve organs because of the high-risk behaviors. Since you feel it needs proof:
A) Gay men should not be eligible to receive organs, since they engage in a high-risk activity.
B) People who are not eligible to receive organs do not deserve to receive organs.
C) Gay men are a group of people who are not eligible to receive organs.
D) Gay men do not deserve to receive organs. QED.
In the context of the discussion, we were talking about making organ donation mandatory to recieve organs, period. No seperate club a la LifeSharers.
(A link to that post, for your convienence: )
You forgot option C): start your own organ exchange club for people with AIDS or high-risk lifestyles and those who don't mind the idea of thier new liver possibly coming with some free bonus HIV. I'm guessing you really don't love that game -- since it's called Being Accountable For Your Own Decisions.
In the context of this discussion, that wasn't an option. See above post.
No one said being gay makes anyone less-deserving of life-saving, via transplant or otherwise.
You did. See above.
It DOES however, make an organ donated by a gay man or an IV drug-user worth somewhat less, in trade, than a organ from someone who isn't as likely to have a hard-to-detect infectious fatal disease.
When we start checking for genetic diseases, will we make it harder for people, like myself, with one, to recieve organs? Note that my condition is both non-contagious, and 100% due to nature, not lifestyle.
Gay sex and IV drug use are strongly correlated with AIDS. Causality is also pretty certain.
I don't know what statistics class you took, but that's why I threw in the line about how many gay people had HIV/AIDS. 1%-2% is hardly a correlation. Nevermind the fact that you need controlled exp
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.