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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."
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
Than someone jumping in front of a bullet to avoid it hitting someone else. Both are willingly inviting death to save another's life.
"Give the guy an evaluation and if he isnt deemed crazy or suicidal grant him his wish."
Wanting to die is usually always suicidal, no?
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?
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.
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.
NY is considering making organ donation the default status in the state unless you opt out of it. I actually think that's a bridge too far -- the state ought not to assume that I want to give away my body parts without confirmation of this wish.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Accepting the inevitability of death isn't exactly the same as being suicidal. We all know we're going to die, most of us just ignore that fact in our daily lives. But when someone is directly facing that reality they may choose to want to make it "mean something" as in this guy's case.
"Suicidal" means wanting to die. I doubt this guy wants to die, but he does want his inevitable death to mean something to someone.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
That's between me and whatever Gods I believe in.
The free exercise of religion is sufficient reason on it's own for organ donation to be an opt-in affair.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Let his family sell them on the black market, of course. What are you, some kind of communist?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I'm not dead yet! I feel happy! I want to go for a walk!
There have been suggestions of medical attention switching, whilst the patient is still alive, from preservation of life to preservation of organs, though. That's worrying.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
There's a difference between "wanting" and "not caring". My wife died several years ago from a brain tumor. Now I don't really care how long I live... Even have my Will, Living Will, DNR and body donation (to science, like she did) forms filed - and I'm only 47. Not only that, I'm not afraid because she's there - wherever that may be - even if only in the abstract.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The problem with it being opt-in is that it also makes it lazy.
Most people don't put any thought into whether they want to be a donor or not, and whatever religious or superstitial concerns may arise, because the question of being a donor or not never affects them in an opt-in scenario.
After all, if you're not a donor, you don't have to think about parts of your body being used to help others. It's easy and lazy.
If you make it opt-out, people will be forced to think about this and make a decision to either remain a donor, or opt out of it.
If it weren't likely to elicit "ZOMG Teh Constutition!" responses, I'd say this should actually really be handled in high school or college. Have people decide actively to either be a donor, or -not- be a donor; no 'default' status being presumed (with younger children falling under the wisdom (with any luck) of their parents/guardians).
If opt-in is the norm.. very well. But I do think that those who choose not to be a donor should in fact be treated differently when it comes to receiving a donor. I wouldn't go as far as saying that they shouldn't get the donor organ (or skin graft or whatever).. but perhaps a donor recipient should automatically be made a donor themselves. After all, it's not 100% their own body they'd be deciding about anymore, and at least somebody whose organ(s) you received -did- choose to be a donor.
Of course he would. He's greedy, not stupid!
You have to be brain dead
That's what? ..... 90% of Americans?
You have 3 days to live w/o a transplant. Do you want them now?
I am an organ donor.
I have specifically requested that there is nothing left of me to bury or burn. Once I'm dead I will have no further use of this meatbag and anyone who wants a piece of it can have it. Hang my skeleton in a medical school and show future generations of doctors what bones look like. Let my heart pump blood in a teenager's body and let someone break it. Open my eyes to see another sunrise. Have my skin feel a gentle touch again after someone's had a bad burn. My kidneys and liver would love to have another drink -- and this one's on me. I'm not sure what my spleen does, but I'm pretty sure there's someone lying in a hospital bed who does. Likewise, there's a kid with lukemia who's dying for a little bit of bone marrow.
When there's nothing else left that someone wants, burn it and use it to fertilize an apple tree. Bake me a pie and serve it with ice cream.
My wife is an organ donor.
My children (6 and 4) are organ donors.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
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
No, you made your kids organ donors. They didn't decide.
It's the same as claiming your child is of a specific religious belief, agnostic, atheist, liberal, democrat, or whatnot. As much as you seem extremely honourable about your after-death actions, I have a hard time accepting people will time and time again press their own ideas onto their children.
Educate them, give them the ability to make their own decision. I doubt that at age 4 and 6, either of them have that ability.
preserving one life, or preserving several.
I don't suppose any of these decisions are easy, but how many people die every year due to a lack of an available organ? How many people do we keep alive for a few days, or a few hours just for the benefit of their families emotional state (which is a product of a culture we created), and in the process wreck their organs?
Having grown up in a rich country (canada), and spent a lot of time in poor ones, we in the rich world do a catastrophically bad job of making hard choices, myself included. We keep people alive, when they aren't able to live, and we treat the absolute maximum survivability of one individual as paramount over the reasonable survivability of many. It's an emotional allocation of resources, not an efficient one. Whether it's healthcare dollars or peoples organs, they are in truth, resources which can be, and are managed. The goal is to manage them efficiently. That needs to combine the people, and actual experts, who are removed from the emotional realities of the situation.
When a soldier sees a grenade land in the middle of his unit, and, in 3 seconds or less decides his life is worse less than his comrades jumps on the grenade and kills himself, whether he (and the rest his unit) could have all managed to get out of the way or not, we give them a posthumous medal, a flag, usually a promotion in rank so his family gets a better pension. But when a person spends years carefully assessing their role in the world, and the quality of life they have, vs what they can do we get all offended.
I think it's encouraging that we would start looking to preserve lives, rather than a life. When you stop throwing silly amounts of money at a problem you start thinking responsibly about what is important, and what can, and should be done. If you build a system that lets people be (emotionally) greedy, and stupid, they will be, because people are. If you build a system centred around helping not just your mental state, but the physical and mental state of people who you don't even know you're more likely to get a more efficient use of the resources available. This requires first and foremost that doctors be honest with patients, and each other, about what a prognosis is. Secondly it require a society that lets people be honest with themselves about what their prognosis is. As the original article states, this guy has had 2 years to come to grips with this, when the life expectancy for someone with ALS is about 4 years (20k people with ALS, 5k/year diagnosis). For every stephen hawking there are probably 4999 people who don't even make the 4 year mark, the quicker you can come to grips with the time you have, the more you can do with it, and the more you can value the time someone else might have too.
Well, they play with LEGO all the time. (There's an xkcd reference here, but I can't check it at work to get the URL.)
But yes, you are technically correct that my kids are not making the decision. I would hope that they get the chance to observe my actions over the course of their childhood and learn to act with decency towards their fellow human beings, rather than being pedantic about how you can never really make decisions. ;)
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