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Man Wants to Donate His Heart Before He Dies
Gary Phebus wants to donate his heart, lungs, and liver. The problem is he wants to donate them before he dies. Gary was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in 2008. Phebus says he'd like to be able to donate his organs before they deteriorate, and doesn't consider his request suicide because he's "dead anyway."
But who is not dead???
If you are an organ donor, they take your organs before you die. If you die, your organs are useless. This is why I am *not* an organ donor.
While I don't really care to stop him in his request - let him do what he wants - I still consider the "dead anyway" argument flawed. ALL OF US are "dead anyway". Life is a condition with a 100% fatality rate. It's just a matter of when. Just because his when is likely sooner than most (not definitely though - I'm currently healthy but could easily be hit by a car this afternoon, and him still outlive me), doesn't make his death any less significant.
In short, it's still suicide. The only question is, whether suicide should be legal or not. Were I in his shoes it's not a choice I would make (might as well eek out as much time as I can), but I wouldn't deny him the right to make the choice.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Give the guy an evaluation and if he isnt deemed crazy or suicidal grant him his wish. His decision is rational enough
Than someone jumping in front of a bullet to avoid it hitting someone else. Both are willingly inviting death to save another's life.
George Steinbrenner tried that, with disastrous results.
Sadly, the standard array of (AMA approved) bioethicists isn't ready for this yet. A very brave fellow who's picture should be in the dictionary in the definition of altruism.
It's the same physician-assisted suicide argument that cropped up so many years ago. The only difference is that this guy's going for a "noble hero" approach instead of a "suffering patient".
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I'm not sure I'd want organs from someone who has ALS. Wouldn't that become a problem for me in time?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And perhaps take some time to reflect on what the world would be like without people willing to sacrifice everything for someone else, even a stranger.
Sometimes being in the limbo between life and death, waiting for it to arrive, is too much to bear. Give him peace in a dignified and respectful way.
Perhaps it says something about us, that we require a psych eval before allowing someone to give so freely of themselves?
I could understand this being posted as "idle" if the person was misinformed about the consequences of losing his organs, but this guy seems to have his ducks in a row.
Everyone is dead already, it is just a matter of time.
If he really wants to donate that stuff, just sign up for it, then hold your breath.
But, correct me if i'm wrong, wouldn't the disease transfer over?
While this may seem like a good idea at first glance, the implications of accepting such requests could be terrifying:
One could imagine threats such as "If you don't give your heart to patient, we will murder your family one by one".
Desperate people with questionable morals will go to great length to save someone they care about.
I propose "Jebus, Gary Phebus!" as the new expression of shock and surprise.There certainly aren't many people like him.
Cool.
1. Find a surgical team who's morals weigh heavier than their career goals
2. Put the patient on liver dialysis and cardiopulmonary bypass
3. If he dies from complications of being on the machines, that doesn't count as suicide in my book.
Were it legal to sell one's own organs (which it should be), he would likely have already sold them, and given the profits to his loved ones - a win-win situation for all involved. Instead, we are stuck with waiting lists and high prices (due to lack of supply, due to ban on selling for profit).
A fiver says he watched the movie "Seven Pounds."
I'm not so sure I'd want the organs of someone suffering from ALS.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
He may not want to accept being wheelchair bound but he could have a fulfilling life with ALS, even though the chances are relatively slim. He should take up physics, after all Stephen Hawkig isn't going to live *forever*. If he really wants to be an organ donor, he should do what every one else does: file the appropriate paperwork at the DMV and buy a motorcycle*.
*As a motorcycle owner, I am comfortable with this joke.
I think this guy finally snapped after watching Seven Pounds...
I saw it on Monty Python's Meaning of Life. (Part V - Live Organ Transplants)
How long until the Anti-Kevorkians create a media 'outrage'? You should be allowed to do what you want, when you want with your own manifestation and its components. If they allow people to have 'DNR' clauses attached to them in case of traumatic circumstances, or allow people to preemptively opt out of life support (having the plug pulled before they are 'dead'), then this mans behavior should be allowed.
If you havn't seen 7 Pounds, it is a good watch and hits this issue in a different but powerful light.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
and they used to have key man insurance on all workers
I firmly believe that euthanasia should be a legal option for people with such conditions and that if they have the presence of mind to make such a gracious decision, that could potentially benefit so many others, prior to their death that this should be allowed.
Even if they were going to cause problems for the person receiving them(and they shouldn't) most people who are on a transplant list are desperate. Willing to accept anything that will give them that next breath. The next day with their family. If the man chooses to end his life in a way that saves others, more power to him.
no surgeon would do it, lest he lose his license, due to those pesky ethics rules by which doctors must abide.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Please?
If you own the code contributed under the BSD licence, then you can sell out and let someone else privatise it.
That's why you need the GPL to guarantee all other freedoms - except the freedom to privatise the code.
Sorry, not directly connected with heart transplants but I thought the parent post's comment about slavery had a more general significance.
But would they really take organs for transplant from a diagnosed diseased donor?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
There's an episode where House shows a guy how to do the deed and do the least damage to his organs so he can donate them to his son. I forget why there was a sense of urgency. In any case, I forget if and how it all worked out as well. Certainly not something to be replicated in this situation. There's no TV magic to make it all work out IRL.
We don't know the specifics of his case -- in his case, it could be an imminent death sentence. Just like some people survive cancer and some people die of it in short order. Usually an appropriate doctor can take a pretty good guess on these things even if it's not flawless.
I could not do this to a person - remove their lungs. Sorry the law do not kill is written too deeply on the heart. It's a terribly sad situation, and sometimes sadly there are no easy answers. The conscience can be a terrible task master, and is not to be trifled with.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
He set it up with the doctors to be put on the machines required to keep him alive until he dies naturally AND he cover all of the expenses.
While I think it would be nice to donate organs and such, sometimes it's just not possible, and this man just needs to accept that or to come up with a way to make it possible.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
As an analogy, let's suppose you have a spare room in your house or apartment. A friend suddenly finds himself needing a place to stay (perhaps his own apartment burned down, he was evicted, or his wife threw him out). Would you say to your friend "You can crash in my spare room for a few days/weeks/months"?
In deciding whether to make that offer, you will be thinking: "Letting my friend stay here will inconvenience me by X amount, but it will benefit him Y amount." Your decision will be partially based on the relative magnitudes of X and Y, and partially based on how nice/altruistic you are.
Gary Phebus (the man in the article) has made that sort of decision. He has compared the benefit to him of his remaining life with ever-deteriorating health (X) against the benefit to anonymous others of him sacrificing X so they have a chance of a long and healthy life (Y).
I greatly admire his attitude.
I would wager he's got the same condition as Magic Johnson... he's rich.
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
This is OK just so long as NOBODY in the entire donor-to-recipient chain makes a profit. Not one cent. Everything done at cost price.
What are the chances of that...?
No sig today...
The problem in your example has nothing to do with allowing giving up your organs and everything to do with old-fashioned crime and thugs.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
ALL OF US are "dead anyway". Life is a condition with a 100% fatality rate. It's just a matter of when.
Lets say 99.999999%. There is that freaky Jewish zombie that nobody has been able to hunt down and decapitate yet...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If you don't own your body, then you are slave.
Then I guess we are all slaves because someone tried to put some THC into his body the other day and got arrested for doing so......
This is not logical. For instance, perhaps no one can possibly "own" a living human being. If you don't own yourself because no one can, then you aren't a slave. You can also "own" your body but still be a slave. You can have your liberty compromised without your body being compromised, for instance if someone threatens to take away your only livelihood unless you comply with their demands. You can also effectively be a slave simply through a lack of understanding of your own freedom.
I only ever see this 'you own your own body' argument from libertarians, who use it to justify absolute property rights. But these absolute property rights lead directly to 'voluntary' slavery: do what I say or starve to death because we own all the property and you do not. The entire premise is a simplistic piece of philosophical masturbation. I say, just as no one can (or should) own the air we breath, no one can (or should) own a human, including themselves. Libertarians want to make everything about ownership, but ownership is a simplistic and selfish concept. I would rather have society based on mutual agreement (which is the only thing society can be based on, really, I just want that explicitly acknowledged.)
Libertarians say, "You own your body, therefore you own the rewards of your work, therefore no one can tell you what to do with your property because that amounts to slavery." I like that conclusion, but why go to such convoluted lengths to reach it? It's much simpler like this: "You control the rewards of your work because everyone agrees that they would like to control the rewards of theirs." That's it. No need to invoke ownership or slavery at all, just agreement. And it leaves open the idea that we can and should limit property rights when they interfere with society. Sometimes, there are things that are more important than having total control over your own stored labor. For instance, pollution is an externality. That means that you should not be allowed to pollute your own property, because it imposes a cost on others. You should also not be allowed to buy up all the property and make everyone work for you or starve to death.
In short, "I own my own body and therefore should have absolute property rights" leads, inevitably, to slavery. "We agree to these sets of rights and obligations" does not necessarily lead to slavery.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
On topic to an extent: Sometimes knowing you have a viable way out (in this case through physician assisted suicide) can encourage you to prolong your issues and maybe, just maybe, you might make it through.
I am an organ donor.
My wife is an organ donor.
My children (6 and 4) are organ donors.
. . . are you trying to say that you believe in organ donation or what?
Death and suicide should not be the province of AMA and their member doctors. Doctors are meant to heal and cure. The final care of people about to die should be handled by those in a subspecialty who make no qualms about the and of life phase.
I believe that should be 'eke'
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Would this guy's organs be considered good if they are coming from a diseased host? How would the recipient of the new organ feel about where the organ came from?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
All he needs to do is jump into a bathtub filled with ice and his pet box jellyfish, and make sure he calls 911. It worked for Will Smith.
For pete's sake. We are supposedly living in a modern, civilized society. I should be able to decide the time and method of my departure without negative consequence to my family. Departing this Earth should be something a family can embrace together, accept, and grow from - not something that we're forced against our will to drag out until the last possible moment, causing irreparable emotional harm to the survivors.
Stephen Hawking has Lou Gehrig's disease and his condition is actually stable. While some people might think that living in a wheelchair in his condition not much of a life, they should realize just how much he has accomplished while in that condition! He has even remarried and fathered childeren!
Vector means bacterium, virus, or prion-protein. Co-factor means it may be one of multiple causes that might trigger ALS, with the other causes being an environmental shock and/or genetic. Until the cause is known, many doctors might be wary of using organs.
Is obvious
Don't you think that's a decision they should make themselves, when they're old enough to understand the implications?
I respect and honour your choice, but I find it very disturbing that you would make it for someone else without their informed consent. It's this sort of casual disregard for the wishes of potential donors that ensures I will never be one.
Damn, I wish I hadn't used all my mod points.
Can I have your permission to use this in my will?
The Internet has given stupid people the resources of intelligent people.
Think about it: to donate, they have to harvest your organs at a point before you've died. You just have to trust that they won't jump the gun because someone really needs a heart. It would be extraordinarily tempting for a doctor to say, well, that guy only has a 25% chance of survival, but my patient has a 75% chance with his heart, so let's take it.
If the system pulls dirty tricks to get people on the donor list, how could they possibly trust it not to jump the gun?
He could move to Oregon. IANAL but I believe what he wants to do would be legal under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. IIRC Washington has a similar law and Montana has legalized assisted suicide.
Sweet...then I get the chance for a Chev Chelio's style spree. Right?
Im thinking that would be way more fun then the next 65 years of my "normal" life...
No, you can not borrow my car for an extended period of time because we, as a society, have agreed that individuals have certain limited rights to control their own possessions.
Funny, you did not address the part where I explained how and why absolute property rights lead to slavery, you just assert that I am wrong. If property rights are absolute, then the rich can simply buy up all property and force non property owners to work for them, because the non property owners have no other means of support.
Let me be very clear about this concept of natural or God given rights. It is authoritarian, because, if rights are immutable and present from birth, there is only one true set of rights, and these are not open for discussion. So, we have the situation where one person is dictating to others what their rights are, saying "No! These are the natural rights. Rights I do not agree to are not natural, therefore, they don't exist. So shut up, your stupid ideas about rights are unnatural."
Natural and God given rights are an appeal to authority, and they appeal to authority, because they preempt all discussion about rights. Either the right is natural, or it does not and can not exist. No new rights, ever. All the old rights, immutable and unchanging. That is very, very appealing to authoritarian types.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You could put off the decision until it must be made.
He needs to do the deed himself, and then let the doctors take over. Go for the brain instead of the heart, try not to damage the eyes because even a cornea is useful. Poison is probably no good, good old fashioned bullet makes the most sense to me. Arrange the time for the "organ donation" through some unofficial channels so they can be at their freshest.
Similarly to mice wanting to "bell the cat", it's a grand idea, but who is going to implement it?
Who will be the surgeon to remove the vital organs from a living person; effectively causing them to die?
How can you trust the doctors to do everything they can to save you if you're an organ donor? What if they look and see than letting your life end could save 5 other lives, and they assume that you're probably just going to die anyway (much the same way this guy does)? I don't have enough faith in the system to believe that doctors are above this sort of thing, and I don't want to carry around a card that may become my death warrant someday. That's not selfish, that's just honest.
He wants to give his heart to you. How Hallmark.
There's a fine line between Awwwwww - and - AHHHHHHHHHH!
One letter in fact.
I think I learned that in an Itch & Scratchy cartoon once.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
I mean while the disease itself affects the central nervous system the underlying cause isn't actually known.(There are some leads like glutamate but they're mostly guesses right now.) So for all anybody knows the cause could have been hiding out in all organs and only screws up the nervous system royally.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I have signed up with Lifeshares.org which is an organ donor 'club.'
This group pools together like minded people to increase chances of getting an organ.
All the members agree to give first preference to others in the group - before donating too less philanthropic minded people.
The group increases your chances of quick organ replacement and gets around the very unjust normal politics of organ donation.
Take a look.
"Do not wait for death to come, because death has indeed already come and has not left you. Its teeth are continually in your flesh." - St. Nikolai Velimirovic
Proverbs 21:19
The single core idea of libertarians is that each person own his own body.
This implies that a person has the right to decide what to do with it. Things like drugs, prostitution, selling parts of your body (organs), should be decided by you and only you. The only thing a person can not do is infringe on someone else's property. Murder, assault, rape, slavery are considered a violation of someone else's property therefore they would be crimes. Murder being the ultimate crime.
This simple position solves this case consistently: he should have the right to decide for himself whether he wants to do this or not.
In fact, he should have the right to sell those organs, and give the proceeds to his family if he wants to. Allowing this would even have the nice effect of reducing organ theft/traffic by not making them so frustratingly scarce. It would also save lives
Unfortunately, in our society we do not own our bodies, the government claims ownership of part of it and feels it has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do with it. It feels entitled to tell you not to take drugs, to decide whether you can donate your organs and to whom, to tell you what you can eat and so on. All this while assuming you are an idiot and that it is doing it "for your own good" because they know better.
Somehow I doubt it, and that's very troubling.
Parents can't choose to withhold medical care, for example.
Do they get taken off the list, or do they have to actively take themselves off the list? What if they don't even know?
I find the idea of harvesting someone's organs without their express consent very disturbing.
Anytime you mess with market efficiencies, the market reacts in a way you didn't quite expect. Hence it's certain that someone from the black market will contact him and give him what he wants. And because he'll get the windfall of the value of his organs, he can direct them to doing even more good. Sounds like a candidate for sainthood to me.
Shouldn't that be 'as' he dies?
I prefer to die than accept organs from such a poor bloke who refuses to live his life to the limits.
It's not that simple. I'm not a slave, yet I must still follow laws of the state. Right now attempted suicide is illegal. You can argue that laws should be changed, or that you have the right to ignore laws, but "you should be free to do whatever you want with your body" is clearly false by any moral measure. It depends how that "whatever" affects others.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
Actually, no, one of the things my wife and I talked about was donating child-sized organs if something happened to our kids.
A small consolation to losing your child would be that 6 or more other kids would get to live. We came close to losing them both once.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I'm just concerned that the donating infrastructure won't seek their consent when once their old enough to make the decision for themselves.
As I said above, I respect and honour your decision to be an organ donor. I don't want to be one myself because the high pressure campaign to get people on the doner rolls calls into question (in my opinion) their commitment not to harvest my organs until there is absolutely no chance, however remote, of survival.
I am on the bone marrow list, though, and I do hope I match someone someday.
let them.
we have more then enough people in this world anyways.
Be seeing you...
It was Scratchy whose heart was stolen. Itchy's a jerk.