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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
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.
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.
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?
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
Wait until YOU are the one who needs an organ transplant... I hope you never need, but think about it.
We all need to come to terms with our inevitable death. Medicine is nice when it can give us a few more years of good life, but we shouldn't come to expect it.
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.
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?
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.