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.

Comments

Free Motorcycles

[Anonymous Coward]

They can compensate by giving out free motorcycles. And keeping helmets expensive, of course.

Re:Free Motorcycles

[ArmoredDragon]

As being on the organ transplant list myself, I'm all too familiar with the reality of receiving an organ, and it's not exactly what pop culture makes it out to be. Transplanted organs typically don't last as long as the rest of your body and are actually a somewhat crappy form of treatment to an even crappier disease. It varies by organ, but you can expect around a 10 year half life for most transplants (meaning if you took 100 patients that received an organ, after 10 years check back with them, only 50 of them will still have that organ.)

And then of course, being on anti-rejection drugs is high maintenance and it just plain sucks.

But this isn't the worst part of it: If you live in the US, often times your wait can exceed 7 years due to the way individual transplant networks are segmented. If you happen to live near two hospitals that cover two different transplant networks (and thus can list twice) your odds are better. If you're like Steve Jobs and you have your own private jet and can fly anywhere in the country within an hour, then you can list everywhere and have an organ in no time.

Still though, it's better than nothing. I personally do like the idea of people being able to sell their organs, which would definitely level the playing field, just so long as it's done as a single buyer system with a fixed price. Countries that do it this way have practically zero organ shortage, and even if you were to pay $100,000 per patient, you'd still save a crapload money over what medicare pays for treatments like dialysis (the average dialysis patient costs medicare roughly $100,000 per year, whereas with a transplant it's a low, low price of $5,000 a year for the maintenance medication.)

oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of all those people who are going to die because of all those other people who aren't going to die!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:A problem that is worth having

[DreadCthulhu]

It will probably be a long time before truck drivers are completely replaced - take a look at railroads, for example. It would be technically possible to automate railroads right now, but the rail companies haven't done so; having a person onboard is very useful for legal liability, security, and fixing all the minor, odd issues that come up, and so on. I guess that we will probably end up with "freight stewards" in trucks, where the computer does most of the driving, but the steward takes over for odd cases, and gets out and fixes minor issues to keep the truck on the road, provide physical security to the freight, and help with loading/unloading at the end points.