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In Israel, Potential Organ Donors Could Jump the Queue
laron writes "In Israel, a new law is in the making: Holders of donor cards and their families would get preference if they should need an organ for themselves. Apparently this initiative faces resistance from Orthodox rabbis, who hold that organ donation is against religious law. Jacob Lavee, director of the heart transplant unit at Israel's Sheba Medical Center, and one of the draftees of this new law, hopes that a broader pool of organs will ultimately benefit everyone, but acknowledges that one of his primary motivations is 'to prevent free riders.' (Apparently receiving an organ is OK under religious law.)"
can go to the end of the line
It's always a tough call when you're talking about life and death and major elective surgeries. But I find myself thinking this is a good thing, that makes sense?
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
I've been an organ donor since I got my license when I was sixteen. I never really considered that people who WERE NOT organ donors would receive the same treatment in regards to their placement on the the list of people in need of an organ transplant. Total bullshit.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
It's apparent their time is out, why are the orthodox trying to subvert god's will? Don't they want to go to heaven?
"If I can't contribute organs because of my religious beliefs, the state shouldn't be allowed to harm me,"
Seriously? This is the kind of stuff Jesus was criticizing in the bible: he tried to show that loving each other and helping each other out is more important than following the law to exactness. Fortunately it is a minority that feel this way, most of the rabbis in Israel are more sane (according to the article).
Qxe4
I never understood why organ donation is opt-in rather than opt-out.
I can understand having religious convictions not to be a donor but the default ought to be "your organs are up for grabs"
Maybe this will open up more discussion of the religious permissibility of organ donations, which is a topic that's nowhere near as black and white as some people make it out to be. Plenty of orthodox rabbis also say donating is permissible (as far as I've heard from members of the New York ultra-orthodox contingent) in a lot of circumstances, but their voices seem to get drowned out far too often. I'd love to see some real discussion of the topic, so while yeah the measure is radical, it's also kind of brilliant. It's also an interesting approach to tackling the religious/secular divide in Israel, which makes the American one look downright friendly.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Israel has various religious sub-groups, and it's only in the extreme orthodox group (Haredim) that organ donation is problematic. In the moderate orthodox community some rabbis have suggested that it's an obligation to sign the donation card.
Oh yeah. It's everywhere.
For instance around late March and early April we'll have passover. It's forbidden to eat anything yeasty or something like that on passover, so no beer, whiskey or more importantly: bread.
See, I always bring a sandwich with me to work and eat at my desk. It's what I do. I like having my sandwich for lunch because I don't feel like heading to the kitchen. But now I'll have to find an alternative because my office is apparently supposed to be kept kosher for passover.
Nobody honestly cares in my department, and not in any of the neighboring departments, and not my boss(es).
How can I have my sandwich without bread? :(
o hai
I may be missing something, and feel free to tell me. But I have no problem with donors being higher on the list. It makes sense to reward altruism in society and this certainly fits the bill. Sure some religions might interject, but just like organ donation religious practices are a choice and like every choice they carry consequences. That's not to say non-donors shouldn't get organs, but they should not be the priority.
Instead of 2 choices (donor or non-donor), how about a third category: donor with preference to other donors. This takes the decision away from the government and to the owner of the organs.
I'm sure some people would be willing to donate to anyone, but the majority would choose the new third option.
Organ donation is NOT always against Jewish law (Halacha). In fact there is almost always a way that it is totally fine and even further, there are interpretations that suggest that not being an organ donor is a violation of Halacha! Please see http://hods.org/ for a very good observant Jewish organization that seeks to make more orthodox Jews organ donors.
Organ donation doesn't conflict with the Jewish religion, in fact there is a religious law that authorizes it under few minor limitations. Also, the law is widely supported by most Israelis, there's a very small orthodox minority that doesn't support it because the public they represent has a low percentage of organ donor card holders and not due to a conflict with religion.
Most Orthodox Rabbis are not against organ transplants. They disagree about the determination of death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation_in_Jewish_law
Why should you get a organ from someone who just died if you aren't willing to give the same if you die?
Except for the group of people who have something that means they aren't candidates for organ donations but are candidates for organ transplant (I don't know if there is such a pair, but you don't take organs from people with aids or numerous other illnesses) - they are going to get the short end of the stick. Though it's a simple exception to add.
Normal rules of ethics dictate that the commons should be more willing to help someone out if they're willing to donate to the commons too. This is related to the idea behind the GPL. If you have two friends who are short a buck for lunch, you're more likely to give your only dollar to the one who's more likely to spot you when you come up short.
Just because organ donation is a matter of life and death doesn't mean that it plays by any different rules than "ordinary" ethics -- it just means the stakes for getting it right are that much higher. The commons should encourage people to contribute /to/ the commons, thereby enriching everyone, and rules like this are just one way to do it.
And this sort of ethics is independent of anyone's primitive superstitions. Superstitions are fine -- believe whatever you want -- but don't expect reality to change to suit them.
Yeah, I don't understand this. Their religion comes from a time when cutting-edge surgery involved a dull axe, some grain alcohol (to get the surgeon's courage up) and maybe some hot tar if you were lucky. How can they possibly justify applying a book written by a bunch of shepherds and nomads to something as modern as organ transplantation?
And if they think that God intended for His holy book to say something about organ transplants, wouldn't it be right there where it's obvious (like say in the ten commandments), and not hidden away in some obscure little passage?
Click here for a list of state agencies that handle organ donation:
http://organdonor.gov/donor/registry.shtm
It only takes about 30 seconds to register online.
moox. for a new generation.
Under Jewish (Orthodox) Law you are only allowed to donate body parts that will save a life. So a heart is OK, but a cornea is not. So on the Israeli donor form, you tick the boxes of which body parts you are prepared to donate
Those Orthodox rabbis need to get control of their minds and stop with these ancient laws and notions.
Er, then they'd be out of a job. Would turkeys vote for an early Christmas?
29 mpg. YMMV.
Not being an organ donor does not make you a douche bag. People may have valid reasons for choosing not to be a donor. Some of those are religious or ethical, others might be medical.
Would you want to accept an organ from a person that has a communicable disease and that disease would come to you from a donated organ?
Would you want to accept an organ from a person that has not taken good care of that organ in their body?
The organ you receive could actually kill you if your body outright rejects it without appropriate post operative medical care. Should we give organs to people that mark themselves donors, but are unlikely to obtain reasonable post operative medical care?
Some people may be better donors than others! Would they re-prioritize organs to people that are more likely to be better organ donors than people that are not as good organ donors? For example, lets say that I'm fairly healthy except for this kidney I have that won't work. Would I get the kidney before a person that is less healthy than myself? Which types of organs are more desirable? Age matched? Younger? Older? Larger? Smaller? Is there a grading scale for organ donor-ability?
A "free market solution" to the problem would, eventually, inevitably boil down to some bankrupt schmuck selling his heart to buy his family a few years of reprieve. Free market isn't moral not just - merely "efficient".
(get away, you zombies! it's not food!)
Jewish law doesn't prohibit anything involving pigs except for eating them, and praying in places where you can smell them.
Thank G-d for that. I was worried that the Rabbi wouldn't like it if he found out I was screwing them.
Wouldn't that be like circumventing the law?
Folks, God's laws ain't like the human kind. They aren't meant to be searched for loopholes. Either keep them or just ignore them altogether, there's no reason to dance around them. If you think God exists, then you should know that God ain't a judge who'll mutter under his breath when he acquits you on a technicality because you happened to find a loophole. He'll be pissed, first that you broke the law, second that you did so while smugly telling him that you're upholding it.
Think he'll like that? And think he'll follow due process and all the crap that came way after he invented the whole deal? Hmm?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I posted this before, but here it is again:
Jews do not believe it's wrong to donate. What they believe is that, as long as a persons heart is beating they are alive.
Meaning: They believe it's wrong to murder someone to harvest organs.
Others believe that after brain death the person is dead, and it's not murder.
The argument is not over organ donation, which even the strictest rabbi agrees with.
The argument is over the definition of death, since most organ donation are done after brain, but not cardiac, death.
-Ariel
When you start putting an acceptable face on preferential medical treatment, it's the thin end of the wedge.
How long before this perfectly acceptable and seemingly reasonable tier-ring system is tweaked some more?
Perhaps soldiers get preferential treatment? I can see that meeting little public resistance.
Then soldiers and their immediate families.
And if soldiers, why not fire-fighters or even other medical staff?
Or politicians?
At what point do people enter a job market, or start a political campaign, just to help a loved one move up a few spaces on the transplant waiting list?
And if it did extend as far as politicians, what with campaign contributions being as messed up as they are, how is that any different than buying the organs in the first place?
That's fucking stupid. Why the hell should they be punished for someone else's decision?
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If you're not a donor, you're a douche bag
Well, I used to be very pro-organ donation, but having seen 'the market' at work in the US, I now feel pretty disgusted. Larry Hagman (a known alcoholic) getting a new liver thanks to his money while others wait in line ? What about Steve jobs, did he have to wait for years in line ? If all it takes is to be rich and famous, then no, I'm sorry, I don't want to participate. Let natural selection run its course.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Yes, well, however, suitable donors make very unlikely receivers (or is it "acceptors"?). Everyone with family history of illness for which a transplantation is indicated will be compelled to enlist, so the donor list would be filled with "donors" who are more likely to need an organ then to be a source of one. The net worth of such a list would be negative, it would be next to useless.
Hopefully one day we will be able to predict and prevent or heal the causes that lead to necessity of organ transplantation. This is inherently encumbered with problems.
Groups of bicycle-riding vigilantes have been repainting 14 blocks of Williamsburg roadways ever since the city sandblasted their bike lanes away last week at the request of the Hasidic community.
The Hasids, who have long had a huge enclave in the now-artist-haven neighborhood, had complained that the Bedford Avenue bike paths posed both a safety and religious hazard.
Scantily clad hipster cyclists attracted to the Brooklyn neighborhood made it difficult, the Hasids said, to obey religious laws forbidding them from staring at members of the opposite sex in various states of undress. These riders also were disobeying the traffic laws, they complained.
Two cycling advocates were apprehended by the Shomrim Patrol, a Hasidic neighborhood watch group, as they repainted a section of bike lane at 3:30 a.m. yesterday, but when cops arrived, no one was arrested and no summonses were issued, police said.
"These people should apply for a job at the DOT," neighborhood activist Isaac Abraham said of the repainting. "You put it on, they take it off -- and they will probably do this again."
A Department of Transportation spokesman said: "We will continue to work with any community on ways we can make changes to our streets without compromising safety."
A source close to Mayor Bloomberg said removing the lanes was an effort to appease the Hasidic community just before last month's election.
Abraham contends the bike lanes put children at risk of getting hit by cars or bicycles as they exited school buses.
But Baruch Herzfeld, who has tried to bridge the gap between hipsters and Hasids with a bike-rental program, said safety is not the issue so much as xenophobia.
"They don't want the hipsters in their neighborhood," he said. "It's like in Howard Beach back in the day when they didn't want black people in the neighborhood."
The cycling advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has not taken sides in the dispute.
But bike lane or not, "cyclists have a right to be on Bedford Avenue," said Wiley Norvell, a group spokesman.
(First of all, to clear up the nitpick: "But you don't need a bike lane to ride down the street!" It's there to keep people from running you over, not to give you legal sanction to use the street.) What's amazing here is that an American city outside Utah acquiesced to demands that a piece of public infrastructure be degraded, on the basis of someone's religious objections to women who are not covered. It was a boneheaded decision to enforce values of a single religious group upon the public at large.
In Israel, where I presume there are no bike lanes, there is clearly not the messy separation of church and state that exists here (for now). Maybe it's fine there for religous law to dictate secular law. But there isn't much organ donation in Israel because of people's religious beliefs. An "opt-out" system isn't discriminatory in any way, but the same sort of people who got the City of New York to sandblast its bike lanes are the ones who will claim discrimination.
> Well - there is evidence that they had engineering skills in Egypt that we can't equal today.
> Try hiring a construction firm to build some of those pyramids. Go for it.
They'll laugh at you, not because they can't build them. But because you're not going to be able to afford it.
You're not the Pharaoh after all - the supreme absolute ruler of the nation.
Or Bill Gates or any of those extremely rich billionaires (who'd have the $$$ for it, but they clearly have different priorities).
A Nimitz class aircraft carrier is pretty much in the same order of magnitude in size, and far more complicated and sophisticated.
Rich and arrogant Jews* have been doing this forever. A quick glance through the New Testament is proof of this. (Even if one doesn't hold it to be scripture, it really is ancient.) Rich people of all religions seem to do it, but wealthy Jews seem to have a knack for it.
*(With very strong emphasis on "rich and arrogant". One of my closest friends from High School is a practicing Jew and I have no patience for antisemitism.)
I'm not sure what drives the transplant double standard. Reiterating ancient nonsense** that doesn't reasonably stem from scripture (but is tradition) is forgivable, even understandable. Making up fresh contradictions is only amusing when lives aren't on the line.
**(It happens sometimes. I heard some today in my church. Let's stay calm, please.)
The following (from the article) is probably part of it:
But it has also raised resistance from within Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority... Most leading Orthodox rabbis — as well as Israeli law — agree that a person dies when his brain-stem stops functioning. A minority opinion, endorsed by Elyashiv, holds that as long as a person's heart beats he or she is alive and therefore the organs cannot be harvested. Donation in Israel after cardiac death is rare and only done in special circumstances.
It's still a double standard. If you can accept such a donation, you can give such a donation. I agree with you: God certainly knows where that organ came from. (He also won't blame recipients who were not conscious when the decision was made. etc.)
(Most transplants in Israel are done while the donor's heart is still beating!?!?! Am I misreading this?)
Final disclaimer: I'm posting while quite tired. I know I shouldn't. The above certainly contains mistakes. Perhaps egregious ones.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
That's a lot of talk about overpopulation and world hunger. If you're really this concerned, why don't you grab a flight to "certain parts of Africa and Asia", slash your throat and donate the usable parts of your body to a "famil[y] of people near starving to death"? You'll not only provide food and directly reduce the population but might just cause one or a few cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, reducing the number of people living in such bad circumstances.
Being a registered donor is a rather elegant way to put my mind at ease with the thought of dying. Should I die through some random act of stupidity, I'll still have done my best to allow someone else to live their life to the fullest. If I'm not going to use an organ anymore, why throw it away? Give it to somebody who needs it and allow them to enjoy a bit of extra time. They might be the one to find a solution to the pressing problems you describe above. And if they aren't, I'll afford them with the responsibility of recognizing that and donating their organs to somebody more deserving.
Read the article first linked, it is actually clear enough. The issue is *not* whether or not organ donation is good or bad (in Judaism, it's good, and expected, by definition - it saves lives, and human life is above pretty much the rest of the religion in Judaism). The issue is about how the organs are recovered, and unlike how the article claims it, it isn't merely an issue with Rabbi Eliashiv being the minority view. The problem is entirely with a conflict between the medicinal and religious definition of death. Judaism generally holds that the heart must stop beating for complete death to occur. Current medical standards hold that brain death is more than enough to recognize death. So donating organs that don't require you to, you know, continue to function as a living person, those were never in question. The problem is that the donor card gives Israel's medical authorities permission to harvest your still-warm body (has to be as close to death for the organs to be useful). In fact, the problem is further complicated when some doctors bend the definition of brain death, in itself a definition that is not clear across international borders, and which saw particular misuse in the UK. That donor card is basically an encouragement to keep the heart beating and, for that matter, possibly skim the correct definition of death. To balance the need of one dying man against the need of many people needing organs. And that's a fairly problematic and delicate situation. The matter in Israel would have been resolved by now if medical authorities were willing to reassure potential religious Jewish donors that they won't have their bodies harvested in a matter not in accordance with their beliefs, by allowing the formation of decision boards that would also comprise of Rabbis - said boards would ultimately decide on organ harvesting, which would help mitigate fears religious donors have of having such matters done in a manner against their beliefs. That's all there is to it. But last time such a board was (almost) formed, medical authorities broke the accords, refusing to let anyone in on deciding such matters as time of death other than themselves. But the thing is - death isn't just a physical matter. And so long as there are people who don't hold purely physical beliefs, they're unlikely to put their final fate completely and utterly in the hands of those who have a completely different set of core values and beliefs - no matter how well-meaning those people may be.
They're cracking down. As we all know, the problem is uploading, not downloading.
Breath animated Adam; the word for the human-level spirit 'ruakh' (as opposed to the animal and divine spirits) is related to breath, air, or wind, like the Sanskrit 'atman', cognate to the Greek 'atmos'. Basically, you become an human being when you first draw breath. And it used to be a lot easier to tell when someone had stopped breathing than when their heart had stopped beating, especially in a body-taboo--rich, culture.
You actually need to check on what you're talking about. Seriously. There are at least two documentaries "out there" somewhere, in which today's modern engineering big shots have voiced opinions that they couldn't build a pyramid in the time frame in which the various pyramids were built. Not for any amount of money. Using the methods commonly used in building our modern skyscrapers, they couldn't move those huge blocks of stone from the bottom to the top. I won't swear to it, but I believe that one of those documentaries was done by the Discovery channel.
Oh, they could build a pyramid SIMILAR to those in Egypt - using concrete. But, they can't move those huge stones, as the Egyptians did.
Can YOU come up with a method of moving those tons of rock, that doesn't require electricity, or gasoline or diesel power?
There is at least one guy on the internet who thinks he has solved the problem. In his case, money might be the problem in building a pyramid on a grand scale. The rest? They don't have the skills, or even the knowledge needed to build those skills.
Much lesser feats of engineering have baffled out best minds for years. Another documentary was running on Discovery or History channel several months ago, in which some people attempted to match one of the Caesar's crossing of one river or another. Those Romans moved an entire army across a river between dusk and dawn, and our people today worked on the problem of building that bridge within such a short time frame for YEARS.
So much knowledge was lost during the dark ages, and the subsequent crusades.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Anyhow, don't eat animals. You should minimize your trust in the processed food supply. For example, see Bribes Let Tomato Vendor Sell Tainted Food.
So what you really mean is "don't eat fruits and vegetables"...
Practicing usury in a society that considered it immoral, for much of that time. Christians and Muslims didn't lend money, because they weren't allowed to charge interest on it, so there was no incentive for them to do so. Jews did. Everyone hates the person they owe money to, especially when they start making unreasonable demands, like eventual repayment. This didn't stop the Christians from borrowing money from the Jews - no one else would lend to them - but it didn't exactly endear the Jews to the rest of the population.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You know why? Because we don't have slaves any more. What they mean is "with modern safety standards, we couldn't build the pyramids". If you told them "Okay, here's two thousand people, you're allowed to kill ten men for every 20 meters in height", they'd be all "so where do I sign on?"
Which is why they "harvest" them from murdered Palestinian children.
"Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs
""It was the middle of the night. The soldiers caused an electrical power outage in the entire village. Bilal was returned in a black bag; he had no teeth. The body was stitched from the neck all the way down to the abdomen," the Swedish newspaper quoted the mother as saying."
"Swedish daily publishes second article on 'IDF organ harvesting' "
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3765992,00.html
Only the devil dares not to speak the name of God - which invokes the grace of divine presence.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell