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Self-Driving Cars Will Make Organ Shortages Even Worse (slate.com)
One of the many ways self-driving cars will impact the world is with organ shortages. It's a morbid thought, but the most reliable sources for healthy organs and tissues are the more than 35,000 people killed each year on American roads. According to the book "Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead," 1 in 5 organ donations comes from the victim of a vehicular accident. Since an estimated 94 percent of motor-vehicle accidents involve some kind of a driver error, it's easy to see how autonomous vehicles could make the streets and highways safer, while simultaneously making organ shortages even worse. Slate reports: As the number of vehicles with human operators falls, so too will the preventable fatalities. In June, Christopher A. Hart, the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said, "Driverless cars could save many if not most of the 32,000 lives that are lost every year on our streets and highways." Even if self-driving cars only realize a fraction of their projected safety benefits, a decline in the number of available organs could begin as soon as the first wave of autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles hits the road -- threatening to compound our nation's already serious shortages. We're all for saving lives -- we aren't saying that we should stop self-driving cars so we can preserve a source of organ donation. But we also need to start thinking now about how to address this coming problem. The most straightforward fix would be to amend a federal law that prohibits the sale of most organs, which could allow for development of a limited organ market. Organ sales have been banned in the United States since 1984, when Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act after a spike in demand (thanks to the introduction of the immunosuppressant cyclosporine, which improved transplant survival rates from 20-30 percent to 60-70 percent) raised concerns that people's vital appendages might be "treated like fenders in an auto junkyard." Others feared an organ market would exploit minorities and those living in poverty. But the ban hasn't completely protected those populations, either. The current system hasn't stopped organ harvesting -- the illegal removal of organs from the recently deceased without the consent of the person or family -- either in the United States or abroad. It is estimated that, worldwide, as many as 10,000 black market medical operations are performed each year that involve illegally purchased organs. So what would an ethical fix to our organ transplant shortage look like? To start, while there's certainly a place for organ donation markets in the United States, implementation will be understandably slow. There are, however, small steps that can get us closer to a just system. For one, the country could consider introducing a "presumed consent" rule. This would change state organ donation registries from affirmative opt-in systems (checking that box at the DMV that yes, you do want to be an organ donor) to an affirmative opt-out system where, unless you state otherwise, you're presumed to consent to be on the list.
They can compensate by giving out free motorcycles. And keeping helmets expensive, of course.
we're closer and closer to organ cloning.
Think of all those people who are going to die because of all those other people who aren't going to die!
You mean healthy people will keep their healthy organs, instead of dying and giving them to unhealthy people?
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n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
This is one of those 'problems' that is worth having... Yes... It will also mean a downturn in auto-body collision shops's work, a downturn in insurance adjusters, and a downturn in taxi drivers (even more than uber/lyft/etc.) ....But like the Buggy Whip Makers who were the collateral damage after the model T.... These are 'acceptable' problems to have....
The BIGGEST issue is still the loss of truck driver's jobs.... This will hut the US economy the hardest. Even then... it WILL happen... despite what "truck guys" I know say about the issue (sorry... bringing personal issues into /. comment... but 2 guys I know from high school have said Trucks will 'never' be automated, because 'I' don't know what I'm talking about...) (FYI: My degree(s) are in cyber physical system stability and security...) lol
and when the software F* up's and starts killing at first we need to stock up. Also maybe we can go to war and get some from that.
I don't want to sacrifice my freedom and privacy for the sake of a little temporary safety. We need to kill the mandatory requirement that manufacturers implement and secure V2V. Security doesn't mean the data you get can be relied on it. It means you can't change or review the source code in the devices your car depends on to communicate with other vehicles. It also means that these are another point of tracking. We need to get rid of license plates because of tracking. Not add more tracking. This is creating a dangerous world where the next Hitler or Stalin can emerge and they will do things far worse than either of these men. Hitler was elected and it's not unimaginable that the next president of the United States won't be worse. Some even think we have a president to be (Trump) who could be terrible in the same ways Hitler and Stalin were. I am a bit sceptical, mainly because Hilary, and prior presidents/leaders weren't exactly great either and it's hard to imagine Trump being worse.
Or perhaps it will just create more incentive for the Chinese to more aggressively harvest organs from their prison populace.
Therefore there will be less need for replacement parts for victims.
I thought we are already 3D printing human organs by the bucketful? Have I heard wrong? Is ... 3D printing overhyped???
Just implement a car self-driving mode that, following an organ shortage, starts driving the car very fast, so that plenty of organs for transplant are promptly collected. The only question remaining to solve is to decide if it is better to collect the organs needed from the passengers or from nearby pedestrians.
"Think of all the people who will now die because of all the people who won't die". Classic!! LOLz
There is so much coming out about self driving cars, even through the tech is years away from mass use. We may never seen consumer owned self driving vehicles either, just due to security and safety issues. I wrote a post on this recently:
http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/
It goes into many of the hardware, software and general transportation issues with self driving cars. I don't think they'll be a reality in the near future. They're a good 6 ~ 8 years off at a minimum.
Although self-driving cars may lead to organ shortages, they will probably also lead to an increase in teenage pregnancy. After all, if the car drives itself to the prom, you might as well make out in the back seat with your date. These teenage pregnancies will probably lead to an increase in the number of orphans up for adoption, and it's unlikely that people will be willing to adopt such a surplus of orphans. Instead, we could just use all the extra orphans as a source for organs. Problem solved!
What percentage of the people who need organ transplants are in that condition because their organs were damaged in an automobile crash? Is it significant, or is it tiny?
#DeleteChrome
Less appeals. Problem solved and we can finally be rid of those pesky Jay Walkers.
Until the leap-year bug hits, and we have a bunch of organ donors all at once, right?
Seriously though, we're closer to lab-grown organs than we are to self-driving cars. This is a problem that is (fortunately) well on the way to being solved.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It seems that science is close to being able to grow human organs in pigs. So maybe we don't have to worry so much about losing transplant organs because fewer people are dying in car crashes.
In other news: Arresting kids who throw rocks at windows is costing window makers' profits.
Sounds like a really, really, really bad idea.
#DeleteChrome
With face recognition we can nail those ne'er do wells, hence putting their organs up for transplant.
and their axlotl tanks when you need em?
1. The number of lives saved from reducing accidents will outnumber the number of lives saved by transplants.
2. The number of people who need transplants because they were involved in an auto accident will also go down.
The primary people who aren't going to benefit from this are the hospitals that make money from the organ trade.
This isn't a bad idea....... Let's compel all prisoners to submit their organs in the event they should be executed Or die.
Step up the number of offenses that will be given the death penalty in order to help with the shortages, And make sure the manner of death preserves the organs.
More than one count of 1st degree murder = Automatic death penalty for 90% of cases.
Being convicted a second time dealing hard drugs or narcotics after serving Jailtime, or a 3rd time for any illegal substance = Automatic death penalty for 90% of cases.
Being convicted of aggravated rape on more than 1 victim Or sexual assault or statutory rape on more than one minor victim = Automatic death penalty for 90% of cases.
There are more than enough people being caught doing these crimes to be taken out of society make up for the shortfall that safer cars' bettering society will cause.
This should also help with prison population issues and associated costs and reduce recidivism.
Make ORGAN SHORTAGES worse? Holy moly the utilitarians are out in fucking FORCE. Way to spin a positive into a negative.
That is the worst example of the broken window fallacy that I've ever heard.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So let me get this straight. It's a bad thing that lives are saved through the reduction of deaths in automobile accidents because it reduces the availability of organs to save *other* lives? You really don't see an issue with this sort of moronic logic?
It happens in the Philippines all the time, with kidneys especially because the donor can use the money.
Also happens in former Soviet states, but not sure it actually happens in Russia.
In the US it is illegal to go to where it is legal to pay for a new organ and go get it, even if transaction happens outside US borders.
Organ market looks a very bad idea: "got a bad debt? Megacorp Inc. can help you - in exchange for a kidney."
I understand it exists as a black market, but making it legal is not a step in the right direction to curb it down.
Usually, when a new — more efficient — way of doing things arrives, a sizeable number of people complain about the poor souls used to making a living doing things the old — less efficient — way. If we seriously listened to these people, we would've still survived on hunting and gathering — in perfect harmony with nature.
That we listen to them at all is why our progress is slower, than it should be. Such people — who are convinced, factories exist to provide employment — are, to put it mildly, cretins. Uber is wrong, they say: think of all the unemployed cabbies and Taxi&Limousine Commissioners! If someone invented a miracle cure for all diseases, these idiots would try to reject on account of all the poor doctors and nurses, who'd now face financial ruin.
But TFA takes this line of thought to a whole new level. Cars, they say, are driven — at least partially — to redistribute organs...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Or jaywalking. Those walking bags of life-sustaining and profitable organs are just flouting their disrespect for everyone!
Also, this is going to create a perverse incentive to immunize yourself against organ harvesting by picking up the latest incurable disease being spread through the prison population like AIDS or Hepatitis C currently.
Is the author trying to say that having 1 sick guy and 1 normal guy is worse then 1 held guy and 1 dead guy?
Btw there are other impacts:
Adoption will be lower, Prostetics will be less needed, psicology will be less needed, trafic police will be less needed, jornalists will be less needed, videogame makers will be less needed...
Just shutdown this self driving insanity...
If less people are dying on the road (resulting in organ shortage) those lives are already saved. Can't say I support people dying for the sake of their organs. Hopefully through, it will accelerate artificial organ (biological or chemicoelectrical) development.
This! REading some of these posts, it would seem that some folks here want to go out and kill others to harvest their internal organs.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Because instead of opt-in organ donation programs, they have opt-out programs.
Everyone is a donor unless they ask not to be.
Sometimes Americans try to argue that this reduces EMT responsiveness because they want the organs from injured people. This, of course, ignores that an over-supply of excess organs means there is no need for a vigilante EMT to decide to let someone die to save some hypothetical other someone... among many other paranoid, flawed premises
Due to less accidents there will be less people needing transplants.
Plus humans are quite capable of finding new ways to kill themselves.
Also, this is going to create a perverse incentive to immunize yourself against organ harvesting by picking up the latest incurable disease
Disincentivize catching one of those by having required testing And assigning a more painful method of execution and expediting the executions of prisoners found to have them.
I don't support people dying from traffic accidents either. If one were to take the route of "for the benefit of the many" morality one could argue a dead teen in a traffic accident can save more lives and improve the lives of many. Death by head injury can leave two kidneys, two lungs, liver, heart, and other tissues and organs. If no serious injuries to appendages, and transplant technology advances a bit, then we'd have two arms, and two legs for veterans injured in war, as an example.
This "benefit for the many" is the path to evil, IMHO. It's too easy to justify murdering someone if it means donor organs for "more equal" people. Just like how using/selling tissues from abortions is considered wrong, it's too easy to justify the abortion if it benefits others.
I don't believe that anyone is suggesting that we ban or discourage safer cars so that the donor organ supply is not diminished, only that this is an unintended consequence of the technology.
A further note on the "benefit of the many" argument...
This argument of making a government imposition on the few to benefit the many is something that really bothers me. People will often talk about how we could help so many poor people if we'd only tax the rich a little bit more. This is the thin edge of the wedge that if taken to the extreme is what brought us death marches and gas chambers. If we can legislate away people's property, like their money, for the "greater good" then why not legislate away their organs? People have rights, and we should respect them. That includes the right of property, and the right to seek happiness. If someone wants to go on an ocean cruise instead of pay for some stranger's college education then that's their choice.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Just do like France will do starting in 2017 with everybody beeing by default an organ donor :
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5l6jnl/on_january_1st_2017_unless_you_opt_out_youll/
... who survive, are in that population of people who need organs?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
1 healthy, employed person not dying in a car accident is better than 1 long shot transplant patient.
Depends. If I needed that organ (or else I would die) and you brought somebody who is compatible with me and gave me a gun, then yes, I would shoot him in the head to get that organ. I am selfish like that.
Looks like a sure winner. In the very near future you will be greeted by a Zombie car, really beat up bomb shell but still running and inside are human body parts and organ parts! Yummy!
Ha ha
There are more than enough people being caught doing these crimes to be taken out of society make up for the shortfall that safer cars' bettering society will cause.
Bettering society? All I see in your remarks is advocating for people with power to leverage it against others to benefit themselves. This isn't how you better society it is how you rot it out.
We have already seen what happens when you breed corruption in the legal system. Government now steals more shit from people without even bothering to charge or convict than sum total of everything reported stolen.
During my lifetime the rate at which cases have gone to trial has dropped by an order of magnitude. Plea bargaining has over time created positive feedback loops in the legal system leading to laws and sentencing which assume pleas would take place allowing for insane and unjust "threats" to effectively compel cooperation. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We have seen widespread fraud stemming from deployment of red light cameras as money making schemes actually CAUSING more traffic accidents by tweaking signals to maximize profits.
We have seen prison for profit industrial complex actively lobby to enrich itself at the expense of all of society.
All profiting off killing people will do is provide incentive to kill more people as is happening right now in China.
We have plenty of prisoners for supply.
Apparently there is some progress in growing new organs in the test tube so to speak. Or perhaps we could cause animals to grow organs that are suited for humans. I have a cow valve that replaced the aortic valve in my heart. It works great and requires no anti-rejection or other medications. The limit on how long these valves will last is not established but i am seven years into mine and it is still perfect. The heart doctors seem to speculate that these valves might last for twenty years.
Well then we need to hurry up and master growing replacement organs inside swine, tailored to our individual DNA.
Disincentivize catching one of those by having required testing And assigning a more painful method of execution and expediting the executions of prisoners found to have them.
Well, another serious problem solved by Slashdot.
Iran has a legal (and regulated) market for kidneys. Donating a kidney is a mild risk, but frankly less of a risk than many professions.
It's a good thing the US has been filling up its prison for a while. Now it's time to harvest.
What they don't tell you is that you are alive when they take your organs. When you die, your organs shut down and become useless very quickly. In an accident where you die, and it takes a while for help to arrive, and they have to cut your body out of the wreckage, and they transport your body wherever, the organs are useless by then. They don't take you to a hospital and rip out a few organs to store on a shelf etc and look up who to give your organs to. To do an emergency operation requires prepping the receiving person, and getting the surgeons and all else ready... way too late for any of your organs to be useful. However in an accident where you are nearly dead, but even could recover, you are transported to a hospital. Then a decision is made as to whether to use your organs or try to get you back to normal. If the decision is to harvest your organs, then the surgeons are organised, the recipient of your organs is prepped and you are brought in to the same operating room, alive, and then they harvest your organs. And then you die. Meditate on that before you sign up to be an organ donor.
Anyone that trusts one is a lunatic or a nut hugger on the technology.
There are lots of things wrong with our organ policy, but the way to fix it is NOT to continue (or increase) dangerously stupid activities in the hopes of getting donors.
Instead we can fix the "no compensantion laws" that are ridiculously tight, and do simple things like:
1) Have tax credits that cover things like a) travel and housing costs for donors, b) unemployment payments if you have to take more than 2 weeks off to donate,
2) Require all government ID's (except passports) to have a field for organ donation yes/no, on the front of the ID. You want to drink, drive, etc. you have to at least think about being a donor.
3) Fix the opt - in system - either 1) Legally enforce opt in for donations so if you sign permission for organ donation, your heirs can not over-ride it) and/or 2) allow states to use an opt-out system, so people have to consciously say no thanks to avoid being listed as an organ donor, rather than go out of their way to sign up.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
1 of 5 organ transplants are the result of auto accidents, most of which are caused by driver error. OK, two points for realizing that driverless cars will lead to fewer driver error accidents, but this isn't the real problem - the real problem is that people are reluctant to sign up as organ donors. For example, if we went into the most dangerous neighborhoods around Chicago and had organ donor drives we could see a definite spike in usable organ donations.
I suspect (I'm guessing) that the vast majority of documented organ donors come from licensed car drivers, why not give other groups a chance to sign-up for organ donation, maybe when they apply for government services?
Ken
and those were really nice, high paying jobs. And I wouldn't be surprised to see remote piloting of trucks before too long. At least in countries with laxer safety regs. It's all coming faster than you think.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You forgot to factor in all the free condoms and birth control pills and IUDs high school kids have access to now, that cuts down on the number of teen pregnancies...
Ken
Fewer organs for most of us, maybe. But for Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Travis Kalanick, and the other self-driving car company executives... well, when they need an organ, a perfectly matching donor will have the perfect crash.
Priority on the recipient list if the patient had been on the donor list for at least 2 years prior to getting sick
Parents can add their children to the donor list to receive this priority as well
The donor registration can no longer be overridden by the family
A tax break for being a registered donor
so you are arguing for the right of the obscenely wealthy to become fuck-all obscenely wealthy? Wealth disproportion is what leads to gas chambers or more likely guillotines. We need to tax the holy fuck out of the wealthy because they have all the wealth. Wanting to take it from the poor and middle class is to want to squeeze blood from a turnip. A nice punitive 90-99%% tax rate for incomes/wealth over $2 million dollars would do a lot to reduce ridiculous executive compensation.
We, the middle and working class are the job creators. The wealthy investors are nothing more than rent-seeking leeches.
Only I can judge you.
I suspect technology is as close to solving the organ shortage as it is to self driving cars in a meaningful way (both within the average slashdotters lifetime, but not this decade)
Stem cell and cloning research should lead to cloned perfect match organs, handling all non genetic defects, and some organs seem fairly machine replaceable (hearts, and kidney (one more shrink on a dialysis machine should get us to an internal one I'd think).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
vital appendages
An organ is not an appendage, and appendages are not vital.
Don't forget pirating music, hacking, possessing an unlicensed debugger or suggesting that people be killed for their organs.
Shit with enough capital crimes, we can finally have the perfect society, especially when the other team gets elected and changes the list of capital crimes. The left will execute you for saying a bad word and the right will execute you for saying a bad word
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If not oneg his head blown off, no more livers, right?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
If solving one problem worsens another, you find a way to overcome.
Additionally, I wonder how many of those needing donations were in car accidents themselves...
Then they'll figure out that for the greater good, the number of healthy young pedestrians killed has to be maximized.
Sure, organ donation after death is a good thing, but people not dying from preventable causes is even better. We have a few years to figure out better organ donation procedures before increased safety via autonomous vehicles becomes even a thing.
I realize I'm trolling a bit here, but: are organ transplants actually a useful thing for society as a whole?
As another poster writes: they aren't exactly a panacea for anything: they don't work for all that long, and while the transplant lasts you are on some major medication to suppress rejection. At the end of which you have gained a few years of very expensive, and rather limited life.
I'm reminded of a case in New Hampshire many years ago. The state had a simple, black-and-white policy: if you were reliant on the state for your medical care, transplants were not an option. The state considered them to be too expensive - for the same amount of money, they could achieve far more benefit across the rest of the state's population. Sometimes it is the job of government to do that kind of cold-blooded calculation.
Along comes a cute little girl who needed a liver transplant. There was a massive publicity campaign - not to gather funds for her needed transplant, but to intimidate the state government into paying for it. The gutless politicians caved. I think they should have stuck to their position.
Less people dying will have impacts also on roadside clean-up crew, and mortuaries, and hospitals who'll have less business, and on motorcycle shops, and so on and on.
But you know what it will do? Save more lives. Which is unquestionably good. Even if one of the people who would have died while driving a car in 2020 were to be Ted Bundy. Because if we start being utilitarian with questions like this, the end result can never be good - because we can never foresee every eventuality, and therefore are forced to live with local maxima rather than any global optimum.
Sometimes I wonder at the headline writers and think whether they're genius trolls to elicit these reactions, or absolute morons. I thought the article was from the Onion. I guess I placed too high a value on it ...
Rather than suggesting that an opt-out organ donor system will reduce or eliminate organ shortages, why not leave it to "the market" to solve all our problems?
Oh, those poor, poor multi-millionaires living under the threat of persecution!
No, somehow I can't seem to summon up any sympathy.
The left will verbally chastise you loudly for saying something that's offensive to a minority group. We don't believe in capital punishment or torture or punitive prison terms like the right does.
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That's how "news" work now.
The job, if anyone doubted it, is to make people angry or afraid, making their brain more available for advertising.
So when something is good (less people dying) you spin it as a negative.
"Oh no, less people dying means that we will have a shortage of organs to save people"
(Excluding people not needing an organ because they weren't in a car accident)
Great job.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
It seems like a lot of countries have an opt-in system when it comes to organ donation. Surely it would help eleviate shortages if the state decided that everybody is an organ donor unless they've explicitly opted out.
...is to make organ donation mandatory.
It's a remarkable achieve to find one in the saving of tens of thousands of lives...
So it is desired that some people die so other people can have their organs? There is no "shortage" on organs. People get sick and die, its the fact of life. To wish for more people to die so you can patch up other people with their carcass to make a profit is just sick!
I'm worried about gangs kidnapping random people, and performing organ extraction surgery at gunpoint.
The U.S. "health care" is a corruption system, rotten to the core. Organ donations generate massive profits. Until the U.S. joins the civilized nations with free healthcare for all, as our birthright, BOYCOTT!
Sheesh, talk about only seeing the downside. More people will die because even more people won't die?
Let me just go and run the numbers on that. It might take a while.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
if you listen to tech executives, importing foreign labor can fix all kinds of shortages problems. Why can it fix this one too?
There will be many drunks and stoners who hail autonomous vehicles and pass out during the ride. How many times have cabbies had to shake them awake and walk them home...? Well, this will no longer be possible. Imagine the autonomous vehicle at its destination that senses the dead weight of comatose passengers. What does it do? It shouts, plays loud music, vibrates the seat. What if the vehicle times out and drives the unconscious passenger to a central location where organs are harvested?
Just a thought experiment proving that every problem can be solved in software.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
They say truth is stranger than fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I hate people who flaunt the law!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!
Leave it to the Progressives at Slate to wring their hands over the fact that fewer car deaths mean less organs. What the hell?
I'm willing to bet at least one or more "journalists" there would support the Hello. Uhh, Can We Have Your Liver act applicable only to NRA members who've signed organ donation cards.
Countries have experimented with the death penalty for stealing, and discovered that robbers would kill their victims instead of letting them go. After all, if the punishment for robbery and murder are the same, you may as well commit the crime least likely to get you caught.
We don't need a cure for Aids to eliminate it, we just need to test everyone and lock up the infected so they don't spread it.
So the Left will make a list of crimes, and the Right will decide the punishments. Everyone wins.
It's not just organs. Also think of all the housing units that will no longer become vacant because the owners are still using them! And the used car market. And more electricity will be used bye ALL THESE PEOPLE NOT DYING IN HORRIBLE PREVENTABLE CAR DEATHS.
Personally I don't agree that the effort to prevent human death, especially accidental death caused by weakness of body or mind, is somehow self-evidently always good.
We are eliminating all forms of natural selection, which I believe is a very bad thing for our future generations.
Increased Population will be mankind's downfall.
How wonderfully naive...
It's quaint that everyone believes that autonomous vehicles are going to save lives, and not indirectly cause fatalities. "Oh, there's a plastic bag blowing about the highway in front of me, 'better slam on the brakes." "Oh, I see that baseball rolling onto the street, but since I'm not human, and can't look sideways, I won't assume there's a child coming to retrieve it."
I could go on since there is an infinite number of scenarios that'll baffle these cars, but I tire of the topic as well as fighting the ignorant, delirious enthusiasm. The cars will come, some will die because of them, and traffic will be intermittently snarled for everyone, in perpetuity, because the cat was let out of the bag.
This! REading some of these posts, it would seem that some folks here want to go out and kill others to harvest their internal organs.
That's actually a classic philosophy hypothetical. Those who promote utiliarian ethics in general believe in the "greatest good for the greatest number." (There are various ways to define "good" here, but that's the gist.)
The extreme utilitarian perspective opposes the kind of ethics that has unbreakable "rules," like "Don't kill people." Instead, every situation has to be held up to the standard "What would make the greatest good for the greatest number?"
Classic objection to that stance is the hypothetical where a healthy person walks into a hospital and happens to be an organ match for 5 people who are dying. Should we kill the healthy person to save the dying folks?
I still remember sitting in an undergraduate philosophy class where two classmates tried to defend killing the healthy person -- there are actually quite a few people out there who want to actually go down that road, so it doesn't surprise me at all if people endorsed it here.
Why are you letting pesky details get in the way of a utopian plan?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
As far back as the 1980's, the Main Stream Media reported the solution that the mainland Chinese Government developed. When the Chinese medical market needed organs, they took them from prisoners – convicted criminals and convicted political dissidents and criminals. Looking to the prison populations, the Chinese Government has a ready supply of Organ Donors. Easily accessible and appropriately feed and conditioned. It's a Win-Win situation! Maybe this is the way the USA and other western nations should go?
...should be made mandatory, regardless of the manner of death. The quaint practice of burying entire bodies is expensive and a waste of resources. Harvest the usable organs and incinerate the rest. Give the ashes back to the family if the need something to bury. Allow people to sell spare organs such as kidneys, skin etc while alive and sell their bodies upon death if they like. End of problem.
I still remember sitting in an undergraduate philosophy class where two classmates tried to defend killing the healthy person -- there are actually quite a few people out there who want to actually go down that road, so it doesn't surprise me at all if people endorsed it here.
the questin of course, is in th eservice of th greater good, are you amenable to having your organs harvested.
In maximum service of the greater good, this would be done in stages, as you wre still alive. Non life ending things like eyes would be the first to be plucked out. Then a kidney at a time. Then finally the heart liver and lungs. Finally, you expire in teh service of the greater good.
I'm pretty convinced that everyone who likes this idea likes it for everyone else but themselves.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Let me finish using my organs before you call dibs on them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A market for organs? Wtf? Why not just make it so once you die your organs are automatically recycled? You can you up the rules on what is considered official death to ease the paranoid.
Depends. If I needed that organ (or else I would die) and you brought somebody who is compatible with me and gave me a gun, then yes, I would shoot him in the head to get that organ. I am selfish like that.
So you are okay with someone else being selfish like that and popping you?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Did these wealthy people break any laws to get their wealth? Is Tom Cruise a criminal for making over 10 million dollars on each of his last ten movies? Is his wealth what leads people to the guillotines? He made that money because he puts asses in seats. He made that money because people gave it to him willingly. Does that make him "greedy"? Did he not work for this money?
Now, tell me, who is greedier, Tom Cruise or the people that think his money should be taken from him at gunpoint and given to them? Remember that it's these same middle class working folks that gave Tom Cruise his wealth $15 at a time for making a movie so they can enjoy themselves for an hour or two. So, Tom Cruise is supposed to work for free now?
I didn't have to pick Tom Cruise, he just popped into my head for some reason. I could have named any of a number of NFL players, popular music artists, or movie stars. It comes down to some people are more valuable in the industry, so they can demand a higher compensation for their efforts. This comes from talent, hard word, and of course just dumb luck.
The reason so many of these uber-wealthy are in the USA is because in just about any other nation they'd see a "holy fuck" level of taxation. So they leave, take their talent to make money with them, and make money here. If we impose a heavy tax on these people we get to do it once and only once, because after that they will disappear. They will leave for a place that does not punish them for their wealth because these people are wealthy enough to live a comfortable life anywhere in the world. Those that can't or won't leave will quit, just retire and live off of whatever they can shelter as corporate assets, gifts to family, ship to off shore banks, or otherwise hide from the tax man. The life in the USA will start to be less than what it was before.
so you are arguing for the right of the obscenely wealthy to become fuck-all obscenely wealthy?
Yes, yes I am. Because if they can keep their wealth then that means I can keep mine, as modest as it is. If the government can take what is theirs just because the government "feels" it is too much then my own wealth is not safe from the greed of the government. It's this kind of greed that turned Venezuela and Cuba from modern and wealthy nations to people standing in bread lines waiting for bread to eat. In a nation of the wealthy the bread is stacked in lines waiting for people to come to eat.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Then you are in great company with those many who vote against their own self-interests. Congratulations! tRump thanks you for your vote!
What good does it do the country for Tom Cruise to make tons of money if it doesn't get taxed heavily? Do those asses in seats mean that the road infrastructure got improved? Does it lead to better schools? Does allowing corporations to outsource work help keep people employed? No, but it does make them wealthier, at the expense of the middle class. They already hide it from the tax man because they own the tax man.
Those that can leave should, there are many reasons to leave the US but heavy taxation isn't one of them. Ask the new President-Elect, only a rich moron pays taxes... That is plenty proof that Ronald "the moron" Reagan's trickle-down economics _theory_ has failed miserably and has been nothing more than a cruel joke on the lower and middle classes.
Have a great day! Enjoy your modest wealth, know that the difference between you and a homeless person is but a round-off error to a wealthy person. That's also how much they value you.
Only I can judge you.
Just add up the organs "saved" by having less accidents and the organs not available because of less accidents.
If you really want to get a positive number from this equation, you need to make deadly accidents (which keep your organs intact) necessary for car crashes.
What good does it do the country for Tom Cruise to make tons of money if it doesn't get taxed heavily?
Because 10% of $10,000,000 is $1,000,000 while 90% of $10,000,000 is not 9,000,000, it's zero. It's zero because anyone taxed at 90% is going to leave the country.
My philosophy professor was from one of these high tax European nations. On the first day of class he told us why he was teaching in the USA at a 5 figure salary, because anyone intelligent and educated enough to see how the taxes were raping them in Europe left for the USA.
All the critics of low taxes I've seen do not discuss the potential of a low tax nation/state/city to attract people from the outside or to keep the wealthy people inside. The USA is not an island, it is one of many nations on Earth. If we impose such taxes in the USA then we'll not only see movie stars leave but also philosophy professors. It's not near as hard as it used to be to make $2,000,000/year. If that's the dividing line between a sane tax rate and an insane one then not only will the millionaires leave but also those with the talents to become one.
Then you are in great company with those many who vote against their own self-interests.
The people that vote against high taxes are the people that make money. The people that vote for high taxes are the people that benefit from the work of others. I'm not saying that there should be no taxes, far from it. Only that if taxes are too high that it is trading a short turn gain for a long term loss. If you believe that people that make $2,000,000/year need to have a tax rate of 90% then you just told me that you lack the intelligence, skills, motivation, and education to ever make that much money. People vote for their self interests, and those that work for their money will vote to keep it while people that don't work for their money will vote to take it from others.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It is like saying that more swiss cheese is bad because it means more holes and more holes means less cheese.
It dead people are needed, we don't need to do it in a convoluted way by making the roads less safe. We could just shoot them in the head. There may be a tiny ethical problem but at least we could select the best potential donor and avoid wasting valuable cars.
Hepatitis C is actually curable in most cases. It just costs a lot of money. Treatment for it is available for $40-50k (I am one of the people which benefitted from the treatment).
For $9,500, Tesla sells a software based "upgrade" to unlock superfast "Ludicrous Mode."
For a $9,500 discount from normal list price, Tesla will lock their cars in "Organ-Donor Mode."
$10,000,000 is fine, we'll put tariffs on Tom Cruise movies since they'll be an import, so we'll get 40% of $10,000,000, still better than the shit deal we get taxing him at 10%. We tax on access to our market same as the EU and China do.
And yet, if you get cancer in Europe, you won't be broke for the next three generations like in the US. They get something for their taxes, we get to invade oil rich areas and take their oil in the name of Exxon. Your genius professor probably goes back home when he needs medical care because, well, because he's not a moron.
No, the people that vote against high taxes are the only ones that count, the ones with politicians in their pocket.
The ad hominem "argument" that you use to oppose my proposal for punitive taxes on incomes over $2,000,000 is purely based on an appeal to false vanity. I ain't biting, it is a stupid ham-fisted attempt. It works on those who feel inferior but oh-so-full of potential. I'm kind of ok where I'm at, try baiting someone more amenable to your coarse approach.
Ditch diggers work damned hard for their money, so do hookers, and minimum wage employees. Have you seen the kind of effort that the guys outside Home Depot put in for $15/hour under-the-table? Effort has very little to to with achieving a high level of success, it is mostly this, in this order (YMMV)
1. Born into right family (wealthy, well-connected, white)
2. Dumb luck, right place, right time
3. Good connections developed (ties into 1 and 2 often) into a profitable business
4. Being a developer of a great idea that separates the poor and middle class from their wealth
That's more or less how wealth happens. If you have wealth (something other than a decent job) then chances are you can attribute your situation to being born into the right situation. The wealthy usually attribute to talent what is most often attributable to early advantages, like tRump with his small $10,000,000 loan from daddy to go into real estate.
4.
Only I can judge you.
--- as a real obstacle in accepting the self-driving cars.
There was such a situation once already. Early Kindle model had an excellent automatic text-to-speech feature, so good, that it was godsent to blind people who could listen to books paying the regular Amazon price.
Didn't last long, because the organization of publishers of audiobooks for the blind sued Amazon and forced it to remove the feature - because it was undercutting their market: they were able to charge roughly 5x paper version price for an audiobook for the blind. And blind would choose Amazon now, instead of having to pay super-premium for their handicap.
So - by court order - cheap auto-translated audiobooks were taken away from the blind people so that they would have to pay arm and leg to the hyenas.
This is a very similar case. These, who benefit from car accidents will fight self-driving cars tooth and nail.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It seems to me that car accidents likely destroy far more organs than they make available for donation. Reducing accidents is a net win for society. Less supply, but far less demand.
That's why it is important to be able to print or grow organs next.
Mostly I want to go out and kill others. Harvesting their internal organs is just a bonus.
What's wrong with asking taxes from the people who have the money?
You can't get much tax revenue from the people who don't have any money.
Mostly I want to go out and kill others. Harvesting their internal organs is just a bonus.
Hey - everyone has to have a hobby.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So sick of the pro-euthenasia, pro-eugencis, pro-homocide push on slashdot.
Let old people live! Let's extend life! Let babies live!
Get rid of the murder propaganda.