Candida Moss, writing in the Spectator, suggests that ‘presumed consent’ ought to apply for donating organs. On the basis that my comments my not appear in the magazine, here’s what I wrote:
Presumed consent is not consent. If it were, then minors or people suffering from dementia might not enjoy the protection from sexual assault that they do at present. Sexual predators could no doubt claim “presumed consent” for their crimes.
There is a difference between medical expedience and morality. There can be no doubt that there would be enormous medical benefits from performing vivisection on human beings, instead of on animals: dosages, differences in metabolic rates etc. would be far easier to calculate.
Rightly, we abhor this and consider controvertial using the results of Nazi experiments on Jews, because it can be considered the partial condoning of horrific actions.
Is it Candida Moss’s wish that the state (probably at EU level) ought to nationalize our bodies and redistribute organs according to need? At least Gordon Brown only wants my money.
I might add that the issue of designer babies giving their own consent to being used as experimental animals is another current topic. It seems pretty sick to me.
I have a hundred pounds that says Muslims will be exempt, because their religion forbids it. Anyone want to take me up on this?
I agree with Antoine. This is one more step in the nationalisation of the citizenry. Your body would no longer be your own, but would “revert” to the state. The final disposition of the bodies of your loved ones would no longer be your decision; their disposition would be according to the needs of the state.
This is yet one more reason for jettisoning the NHS. As long as the government has a say in health provision, they are going to inch forward the control lever. The cutting out of a dead person’s kidneys and giving them to someone with kidney disease (including our friends the Muslims, I’m sure. We mustn’t discriminate on religious grounds) will “save the NHS 500 million pounds a year”, or whatever figure they’re making up, in dialysis.
There’s always a reason. It’s always to save tax money.
Simple question this (forget about ‘nationalisation’ or ‘statism’ or ‘tax’for 30 seconds, and consider:)
If when you die your organs can help a terminally ill person survive, would you oppose the use of your organs and say no?
If so you are incredibly mean (although there are a lot of selfish Rand fans here I didn’t realise it persisted post mortem) and should rightly be made to carry a ‘non consent’ card saying “In the event of my death I am not willing to give my organs to others”
This is the opposite to the current donor card situation, where the public’s inertia means there aren’t enough donors.
Why Verity feels the need to slag off Muslims I don’t know (actually I do know!! it’s Verity and we all know what she is) – but anyone could opt out of this scheme – just carry the card.
The ‘Mengele’ mentality has long been a feature of our ‘Jewel in the Crown’.
Remember Alder Hay and other teaching hospitals? and they were not even taking organs for transplant, but ‘for experiment’, – experiments which rarely occurred, and the surplus organs disposed of in the usual haphazard fashion, i.e. the garbage sack.
All done without the consent of Parents or Patients, and the end result was the usual medical whitewash.
Somehow the difference between socialism and fascism appears to get smaller by the week.
I await some fool proposing legislation for ‘Age based euthanasia’, – “to save the State large sums in pension and health costs, you understand”.
I suppose, that like undertakers, some doctors just get innured to the sight of cadavers, and terminal illness, and forget that they (the donors), were once living people, and as such, deserve a modicum of respect.
A lapse of ethics in the case of the undertaker, may perhaps be excused, but surely not from a ‘medical professional’, whose whole reason for existence is based on, what should be, a rigid code of ethics. Ignoring the ethic part reduces the practioner to being no more than just another butcher.
My apologies to those medical professionals who do practice ethically and diligently, they deserve our respect and trust, it is just a small minority to whom the end justifies the means.
p.s. Lord Lummy,
It could all be related to religion, that you may be an atheist, is fine, but others do have and practice a religion, whether it be Muslim or Christian. Having a religion has yet to be banned or regarded as a criminal offence. (Mind you that might not be too far off).
Isn’t this what Blunkett has been making such a fuss about this week.
As with so many things, – it’s nice to be asked, and not be taken for granted, whether dead or alive…
And what if this card happens to get lost/destroyed? Hell knows, you might get mugged, shot, and left for dead while a criminal makes his getaway with your “opt out” card.
So what’s next? Opt out National Service? “Oh, sorry Sir, we’ve lost you’re “opt out” request in the post. No worries, you’ll only be posted to Fallujah for 6 months or so….”
It doesn’t strike you as “incredibly mean” to grab peoples organs against their wishes?
They’re MY organs. Since when did I give anyone default consent to use my body (no matter what good purpose they claim they’ll use it for?) So you think I transfer directly to the State once I’m dead?
PS – I’m not sure what Antoine Clarke was referring to with the “designer baby” item. I see no issue in selecting an embryo for a child who’ll have a matched tissue to a sick sibling. No one gets to choose the conditions of their own birth. In a free society, they’ll at least get to choose the conditions of their own death. Hopefully.
There is a reason for this “shortage”. There is no market in organs. Just as socialist Russia had bread queues, socialist medicine in the UK has organ queues.
The most common thing needing donation is blood. They would recieve vastly more of it if it were a way for the donor to make money. The same goes for other replaceables, and redundant stuff like kidneys.
Additionally, if organs were saleable, agreeing the sale of your organs after death would be a way to add a little to your legacy. Lots more people would do it.
Although I think some form of incentive would help (not sure what though – perhaps make donation of blood like jury service and the donor gets a day off work??) as well as education and an end to inertia – a ‘market for organs’ is grossly unethical, not to mention illegal. You see it discriminates against the poor and the desperate, who in certain circumstances may be forced into selling organs.
For those who are so against the use of your organs post mortem and are too stupid to retain possession of a card, the you could tell your family or even make it clear in your will.
You will get a choice re the use of your property (ie your body) after your death – all they propose is to opt out rather than opt in.
Hardly a big deal – they won’t dig you up of you’ve said no thanks. And if it makes the system (saving terminlly ill people) better, what grounds do you hav to complain?
PS Blunkett was trying to encourage religous harmony by criminalising religous hatred. Do try to keep up Ernest.
Interesting:
An innocent-looking proposal about harvesting tissue after death, and already we are discussing what living people should rightly be made to… That’s the slippery slope angle (pun intended — bad, I know) demonstrated quite nicely, right there.
Simple answers then:
You can’t forget about the state in the current context, for a simple reason: we’re not arguing whether donating organs is right or wrong, we’re arguing precisely to keep the right to decide ourselves and we’re opposing the state taking that right away from us.
That’s rather obvious for just about everybody here. Funny you didn’t get it.
Next, let’s say I chose to diverge from the case at hand, and follow you on the lecturing about us being bad naughty individualists. You asked:
Another simple answer then: I don’t know, pal. It depends.
If when I die my organs (let’s say my kidney for instance) can help a terminally ill Osama bin Laden to survive, the answer is no, plain and simple.
If you could answer “yes”, then let me tell you, you’re more than incredibly mean, you’re a sick bastard.
In any case, and as far as I’m concerned, the same would go for a terminally ill child molester, sex offender, or the terminally ill asshole next door who gets drunk every other night and beat his young wife, his kids or even his dog, etc.
You get the picture, I take the moral high ground.
And guess what? We’re going back to the state, nationalization and all that now: with the state, that kind of legitimate discrimination wouldn’t happen (it simply couldn’t, thank in no small part to simplistic bleeding hearts – no pun intended – like you).
However, if you leave the decision to each and every of us individually, then I can personally answer that question with a yes or a no, and not with “it depends” anymore.
But ultimately, I retain the right to decide, and it’s certainly not up to the state or anybody else to make a “default” choice for me.
Lord Lummy – Sorry, old Beano, I don’t accept your definition of my motivations. Go practise your amateur psychology elsewhere. I have a strong sense of private property, and my life and my organs are my own. If I want to be buried, or cremated, whole, at the moment my rights have to be legally respected.
You all know what I am, do you? Have you noticed that the most privileged people in British society today are the Muslims? We can have TV comedies about Jews, priests, Jamaicans, Hindus, the Christian church, Sikhs – but don’t mention the Muslims!
We can have the BNP denied banking privileges, but not the House of Saud and its many mullahs who preach that Jews are pigs and eat children and deserve to die.
We can have single mothers on sink estates separated from their children, sent to prison and their children taken into care because they couldn’t pay for a TV licence (although TV may be all she has to keep her children in the flat and out of harm’s way), and Captain Hook, preaching hatred of Britain and all it stands for and encouraging young Muslim men to violence against the indigenes in the land of their birth, and he receives over two thousand pounds a month in “benefits”.
This government has carved out a special, privileged niche for the Muslims as part of its carving of Britain into special interest groups and pitting them against each other.
Unlike you, I have lived in a moderate Muslim country, liked it immensely and have numerous Muslim friends of both sexes. I say this with confidence, because it is always people with the least knowledge who are the first up on their hind legs to declaim their righteous outrage. This government in Britain is using the very small Islamic population as a tool for de-Britishising Britain, which is why they are granted privileges and why their favour is curried by the Gramscians.
Read my comments and you will see that my beef isn’t against Muslims. It is against this government’s employment of them as a rod with which to cow the indigenous British people.
As for body parts, people needing kidneys and eyes can pay for them. That way, the body part is twice-blessed. It blesseth him who sells and him who buys. What is wrong with that?
For the last time as it’s becoming boring – you still have a choice – say you don’t want to donate. Currently in the UK I AM MADE TO FILL IN A CARD TO SAY I DON’T MIND MY BODY BEING USED TO HELP OTHERS WHEN I DIE.
Listen frogman, when I die you can have my bleeding heart – even if you are a child molester or UBL.
Following your ‘cautious’ (?) policy would mean that no one would donate organs on the basis that thety couldn’t be sure about the moral fibre of potential recipients. It’s a rather stupid philosophy.
“Lord Lummy” writes:
“For the last time as it’s becoming boring..”
You’re right. It is. You’re the same troll, night after night.
You’ve had your answers. And, as you seem incapable of understanding them, what more do you want?
Blood? Oh… of course… that’s *exactly* what you want. With a few freebie body parts thrown in.
Come back, Peter Cushing, all is forgiven.
Lummy Old Chum,You seem to be a public spirited chap,I think you should set us an example,why not start the ball rolling ,you have two kidneys,how about donating one.Come back when you’ve done it and we’ll chat again.
‘Lord Lummy’ is either being intentionally obtuse or he is not actually reading the replies. He is just another amoral utilitarian who seems incapable of even understanding a morals based objection given he makes not attempt to answer the points made by Frogman.
Lord Lummy says “a ‘market for organs’ is grossly unethical, not to mention illegal. You see it discriminates against the poor and the desperate, who in certain circumstances may be forced into selling organs.”
…a ‘market for work’ is grossly unethical, not to mention illegal. You see it discriminates against the poor and the desperate, who in certain circumstances may be forced into working…
Heh.
That argument sucks donkey gonads for the following reason: if you’re poor and so desperate you’d sell a kidney just to get a few bucks, and you can’t, then you’ll starve instead. Oops.
Nobody is better qualified to judge when it’s “fair” to sell your organs (or even harmless replaceables like blood) than you yourself are. Nobody else can make better judgements about your life.
Also, nobody ought to! You own you, all of you, to use, misuse, deploy and dispose as you see fit. No exceptions, no arguments, no limits.
Lord Lummy,
Perhaps I did not make the connection between your smug remarks about non-donors being a selfish bunch, and the Blunkett proposals quite clear enough for you.
You calling people who do not wish to donate, on religious grounds ‘selfish’, could be construed as being anti-religious speech. Which was exactly what Blunkett intended. Apologies for not explaining it in one syllable words.
“a ‘market for organs’ is grossly unethical, not to mention illegal.”
Are you suggesting that it would be legal and ethical, only if operated by the State? While the legality may well be manipulated by the State, the ethical requirements of such a scheme would be the same whoever was running it. In the light of past experience, I doubt that many would feel very comfortable placing their trust in ‘the State’ to act ethically.
How touching to see your concern re the ‘poor and the desperate’, (What a ‘trigger phrase that is, and so passé). That it would be discriminatory against them, if, ‘in certain circumstances’ they may possibly have to, or be tempted to sell their organs, yet it is fine for the rest of us to have them taken from us without our say-so.
How kind of you to be so free with our organs….at least they would have something to sell, other than their daughters.
I can hardly imagine anyone in England or the EU being so impoverished that they have to sell an organ or two to survive. Surely the existence of such poverty, would indicate yet further failure of the welfare state to provide even a minimum standard of living.
It would seem that you are looking at this ‘organ donor’ thing, from the viewpoint that you may one day, be requiring an organ for yourself, – now that could be called a ‘selfish’ approach, – and you seem to be ignoring the donor, and the donor’s family’s wishes and feelings on the matter, it is, what might be called ‘a younger persons’ viewpoint. The dead donor’s family may be so disturbed by the thought of burying a mutilated body, that they may never get that beloved pc euphemism, ‘closure’. It is not a simple case of being selfish or altruistic,
Coincidentally, there is a piece on our tv about Doctors in hospitals having the authority to mark a patients file with the dreaded DNR (do not resuscitate), initials.
The item was about doctors actually taking into acount the need for organs to transplant, with carriers of the donor card being prime candidates for the initials. Seems that ethics just ain’t what they used to be…
Perhaps it should be put more brutally,if you are not dead you will be by the time they have take your guts out,you need to know everything is taken and organs are NOT taken from the dead,it is fresh living organs that are required ,you will be kept alive long enough for the organs to be removed.You might be termed brain dead but your body is alive,what is regarded as dead by todays medicine may not be the same tomorrow.
Doctors use a system of triage,which prioritises procedures,do you want them to be trying to save you or somebody else who they regard as more deserving.
Do you want doctors employed by the state to decide who is more deserving of your body parts you or somebody else?
If your organ are nationalized when you’re dead, why bother wait if there is a need for it. Why, your two kidneys can save some very needy people elsewhere whom the State deem more important than you. And since you’re not going to survived without kidney, why not harvest the rest of you while we’re at it.
Yes, this is indeed a sketch from Monty Python’s movie The Meaning of Life‘s Live Organ Transplant. But this is just a small step from nationalizing your dead body.
There are some very confused view points above. As with all posts Verity has an anti Muslim / government are too protective of Muslims rant. Only she knows why.
Ernest goes doctor hating, again. There is some Freudian explanation for this – refused entry to med school / ill health. Who cares?
Peter apart from doctors who else do you think are qualified to make decisions on transplantation? Plumbers / Politicians ? YOU make the choice by carrying the card.
Julian how can you compare going to work with giving up an organ?
Peter you can have both my kidneys, eyes…the lot – once I’m dead. It’s usually the easiest way to do it, given my need for them while I’m alive.
There are a lot of complications in the current system that neither the proponents nor opponents of the new proposals have really addressed. Wallowing in the scally sentimentality of Alder Hay just confuses the issue further.
Like Lord Lummy, I carry a donor card. Unlike him I don’t object to having to go to that huge efffort to make my wishes clear. What troubles me is that my wishes are largely fact irrelevant. The current protocol is that the next of kin decides, and their decision overrides that of the dead. But who owns the organs? No one. There is no property in a body.
The donor card is not a consent by the (former?) owner of the organs concerned, just a means for the system to put pressure on relatives.
Well, well, well… How stupid are you Lummy my boy?
Allow me to answer that: enough to invalidate your point and make mine in just two sentences, one right after the other. Brilliant.
See:
You assume very authoritatively that no one would donate organs as they couldn’t be certain (really?) of the moral fiber of the recipient (which incidentally is nothing but a pointless assumption, backed only by your childish “the world sucks and people is evil” nihilism – No facts, no figures), yet you’ve just wrote that you would donate, no matter the recipient, and that you’ve already signed in.
Hello mon bonhomme?
May I suggest crawling under a rock, now that you’ve made such an ass of yourself?
Somehow, I get the feeling Lord Lummy won’t be posting on Samizdata for too much longer….
What a simple soul Lummy must be, it seems that he still believes in Father Christmas and fairies, and that life comes two toned, – i.e. black and white. He must be very young, and probably still wet behind the ears…
Isn’t this kind of argument fallacious, as you’re assuming the phrase “assumed consent” has the same moral status in all circumstances?
Compare with other phrases, eg “killed”. “I killed him cause he got in my way” – moral status = bad. But, “I killed the rabid dog because otherwise it would have eaten those poor babies” – moral status = good.
Therefore this kind of argument simply lacks a legitimate structure, no?
The error in the original Spectator article was the utilitarian assumption that the collective has some sort of a priori claim on the organs of the deceased. I totally reject such an impertinent claim. I should not have to sign a paper or carry a card to tell the medical profession et al that they cannot use my bodily parts at will.
The very fact that people make the argument that the State has a presumptive right on our bodies post-death tells us everything about the decline of respect for liberty in the west.
The most chilling part of Lord Lummy’s argument is the ‘opt out’ verbiage. If that notion isn’t completely couched in statism then I can’t think of one.
You see, Lummy, the State is comprised of the citizenry contracting together, and IT follows the desires of the individuals who make it up. It doesn’t exist a priori to me or you and something we ‘opt out’ of. The State doesn’t own anything, individuals do, and the only property the State can ever own is that which is contracted to it to preserve life and property. There is no such contracting when they presume consent to harvest organs from the living or the dead. IT ISN”T THEIRS TO CONTROL IN THE FIRST PLACE. If the person passing has not ‘opted in’ to some donation mechanism, the body passes to the next of kin, and they can do as they like. If the individual has not made a provision for their remains, through their value system, while alive, then it reverts to the next closest relative, and their value system applies. The State, being valueless, has no say, as long as the body is not left on someone else’s property.
And as for selfish Randians, what is it to you that one is selfish? You’re going to have to be a lot more specific about your breathtakingly sure system of interdependence we all should be living under. You are so sure of, as yet undefined system of living, that you don’t have a problem Forcing others to live by it. I’m sure, as always, the anti-selfish creed you apparently live by is steeped in Morality and is not be questioned. It’s par for the course. I am so very weary of Statist drones who casually palm off ‘selfishness’ as the afflicted form of living when it is manifestly inherent in the individual’s process of living. There is nothing more selfish than to cobble together some collectivist axioms that warm the cockles of your heart and then proceed to direct Force against anyone who dares not to live by it. Which is more selfish, to possess life and property and to desire to left alone, or to possess everyone else’s life and property and use Force against those who resist?
Note: I drafted my comment but did not post it right off. Sorry that it pretty much says the same as Johnathan’s just before mine.
The reason to deny pay for blood is that needy folk lie about their medical history. I have suggested that, instead, blood donors get to deduct the retail price of blood from their income for tax purposes, just like if they donated a car. an organ donation could reduce estate taxes or even the final income tax bill.
Toolkien, no need to be sorry. Your comment hit the nail on the head with a satisfyingly loud bang.
When I’m dead, I’m dead and I cannot own anything. If you can tell me how I can prescribe – from the grave – who gets my organs at the time (“it all depends” remember) I might have some sympathy for the argument.
So long as I’m dead at the time – take what you want. As for nonsense about coming back when you only have one kidney…
You write your will before you die. That’s how the rest of your property is disposed of, excepting any death duties your estate has to pay.
The state has very little to do with this issue. Why would they want organs? Their systems merely act as facilitators between donors and recipients.
As has been pointed out this system is rather inefficient as there are not enough donors. This has to do with religious beliefs / the taboo nature of organ donation and many other factors – but this proposal aims to remove inertia as a reason for not donating.
Toolkeins’s typically verbose retort has at least one major flaw:
You can have life and property I’d just like you to consider giving something that is no longer any use to you once you’ve finished living. And if you say ‘no thanks’ that’s fine – I don’t propose using force to get you to change your mind. Even if I wanted to I don’t think force would have much effect on your then dead mind.
If you don’t want to donate just say so – but you’d need a pretty big card if it was written in your wordy style.
The issue can be boiled down to this – in the event of your death would you like your body parts to be used to help someone else have a better life?
If you’ve spent your living days following a socially individualist mantra which entails not wanting to help other people – I can hardly expect you to change the habit of a lifetime once you are dead.
Perhaps some people do us a big enough favour simply by expiring. The world automatically becomes a better place, even if they decide not to donate.
The issue can be boiled down to this – in the event of your death would you like your body parts to be used to help someone else have a better life?
Why are you asking? Shouldn’t you rather just blindly assume we all answered “yes”*?
(*unless we happened at the time to have in our pockts a card saying “no”)
Lord Lummy doesn’t get it. The presumption that a person’s organs are fair game for use upon death is what I find so objectionable. It is a direct assault on dignity. No utilitarian calculation, even one involving cant invocations of “compassion”, can hide that ugly fact.. I feel strongly about this issue even though, as an atheist, I hold no belief in the afterlife. My body is my personal property and I should not have to ask, in advance, for that body to be left in peace by carrying a card or signing a form.
For what it is worth, I have every admiration for those who choose to donate their healthy organs to others in the event of death. That admiration is borne precisely from the fact that such donors have chosen to take the step, rather than act as passive objects of State activity.
In his book, the Constitution of Liberty, FA Hayek writes that one of the uglier facets of the growth of state power and state medicine would involve this sort of assault on individual dignity. As on so many other things, he was right. He’d have spotted the dodgy reasoning of Lord Lummy a mile off.
Well said, Jonathan and Toolkin and others. In fact, the only nitwit pleading for presumed state ownership of our bodies after we are dead is Lord Lummy.
Lummy, stop accusing me of posting anti-Muslim comments. Place your index finger over my comments and drag it along the screen very slowly, following it with your eyes and lips. Although if I’d felt like posting negative comments about Muslims or Islam, I wouldn’t have hesitated to do so, I did not. I posted that this authoritarian, repellent government elevates Muslims above the indigenes whose bravery and genius built this country, for the sole purpose of diminishing our stake in our own country.
Re the Speccie article, it was written by a young woman who needs a kidney. One more example of Boris’s inexplicable failure to understand why people read (or read, past tense) The Spectator. Her article was a naive piece of special pleading coupled with an irritating assumption that the rest of us don’t understand the system.
But she can easily obtain a kidney if she goes to India and buys one. She can be operated on by skilled Indian surgeons in India. And we can keep our laws as they are.
You can have life and property I’d just like you to consider giving something that is no longer any use to you once you’ve finished living. And if you say ‘no thanks’ that’s fine – I don’t propose using force to get you to change your mind. Even if I wanted to I don’t think force would have much effect on your then dead mind.
If you don’t want to donate just say so – but you’d need a pretty big card if it was written in your wordy style.
The issue can be boiled down to this – in the event of your death would you like your body parts to be used to help someone else have a better life?
You wrong, me right. Better?
BTW, word count, you=802, me 461 (inclusive) . This is a blog, not a message board, so I try and get all my thoughts in one shot.
Stressing my wordiness twice in five sentences is ….. wordy?
I’d vent my spleen longer, but apparently I’m only renting it, and I don’t want to piss off the landlord.
Julian has already hit the nail on the head.
Lord Lummy commends a Statist solution to a problem created by the State in the first place (viz banning the sale and purchase of organs). He (Lord Lummy) then seeks to defend the ban on the grounds that it might enable poor people to earn large amounts of money, which they could not otherwise earn.
Truly the morality of the Statist is a marvellous thing to behold.
OK I see, you don’t like giving – even giving dead, no longer useful to you things. That’s your choice.
Verity comes up with the biggest piece of N.I.M.B.Yism I ever read:
which puts her at odds with Cydonia, who rants:
Following your warped logic I suppose you are narked by state intervention which prevents the poor ‘earning large amounts of money’ via child prostitution?
Poor people selling body parts / services is essentially the same thing. That you advocate such an abhorrent practice illustrates how twisted you are.
Toolkein what’s the rental rate on your spleen?
That’s the same rate as your brain, unsurprisingly.
I took it for granted that Cydonia was referring to adults selling their body parts, which would be the same thing as adult prostitution, not child prostitution. Children selling their body parts would be the same thing as child prostition.
No, LL, we’re libertarians, not socialists. That means we can see the difference between giving and being robbed. Plus we recognise that mutual voluntary exchange (sale or barter) can provide for a larger volume of trade than pure charity, that individuals are the only ones who can decide their own best interest, and that when people say “exploitation” it’s nearly always a code word for “I want to make your decisions on your behalf”.
Well Lummy
Peter apart from doctors who else do you think are qualified to make decisions on transplantation? Plumbers / Politicians ? YOU make the choice by carrying the card.
It wouldn’t do to have a conflict of interest between two teams of doctors,one that wants the organs and one that want you alive.Look up triage.
Having to carry a card saying you don’t want you body butchered if they decide to pronounce you dead,you’d need it tattooed all over you.Check medical negligence,wrong leg etc.
If you wish to carry a donor card then do so but do not pretend that an opt out card is the same.In the former you are volunteering and in the latter you are being volunteered.If you think in your naivety obtaining an opt out card would not have a multitude of bureaucratic obstacles then you have no concept of reality.
BTW What if your card isn’t with you when you arrive at A&E.
Peter you can have both my kidneys, eyes…the lot – once I’m dead. It’s usually the easiest way to do it, given my need for them while I’m alive.
Lummy Since you are so altruistic with other people bodies is it not reasonable to expect more from yourself.You can live with one kidney show us an example donate one now.
Ian
So long as I’m dead at the time – take what you want. As for nonsense about coming back when you only have one kidney…
Actually one of everything,I don’t know how far they have got with testacle transplants
Lummy has provided an important service for us in giving people a text book example of the basic debate tactic used by the left.
Ignore the logic of your opponents argument, avoid debating on logical/ration grounds, and attack their character, trying to paint them as “bad people”.
So, “It’s my life/body/property so I should have the right and freedom to choose” becomes “You dont want to help the poor and are selfish”.
“The state cynically uses designated immigrant minority groups such as Muslims as weapons to divide and conquer and weaken resistance to the program of trans-national socialism” becomes “You hate Muslims”.
Resistance to Islamification becomes “Your a racist”.
Resistance to the Nanny State becomes “You want the poor to die in the streets”
The preservation of basic freedoms of thought, political view, religion, speech, association and the right to self defense becomes “Your a right wing extremist”.
And of course, the defense of freedom and civilisation against the Islamo-fascist terror networks becomes “Your a Zionist-Imperialist warmonger”.
Pathetically predictable.
Yanno, I’m thinking… socialism is based on envy. You’ve seen money envy, now see organ envy – “redistribute the innards!”. Rand was right; socialists envy your life, and they want to take it away.
Lord Lummy,
Let me be the latest to state the obvious. No man or man-made government owns me. The United States government does not own me. The State of Louisiana does not own me. A socialist utopian like you does not own me. Since you are not the owner of my body, soul, or any other part of me; you do not have the right to tell me how I may use parts of my body unless they are being used to forcibly coerce others to my will.
I can choose to do with my organs as I wish. Unlike most on this thread, I’m an American and we’re facing a similiar situation in this country with organs. I chose to donate my organs when I got my driver’s license because I’m a nice guy. However, due to the lifestyle I currently lead and wish to lead in the future, I doubt my organs will be of use to anyone. Though, if someone offered me a contract that would allow me to sell my organs upon my death, with the proceeds going to my heirs, I would probably try to live the cleanest and purest life ever known to man.
You see, if we adopted a free market system for organs, the overall public health would improve because those who sell their organs would be subjected to terms of use for the merchandise (organs in this case) by the company they’re selling their organs to. If the person gets a nasty disease like AIDS, or uses tobacco, or uses illicit drugs for example; the contract would be null and void and their heirs get nothing.
Finally, this would drive down the costs of organ transplants because of the increased supply of organs (see the basic economic law of supply and demand).
Lummy
Following up on Julian and Andy Wood’s comments, would you ban adult prostitution? If not, following your logic, why ban the sale of organs by adults? Indeed what are you criteria for deciding what things people (adults) may be allowed by the State to freely sell to each other?
Think about it before you answer.
I think Kevin’s idea is feasible
If that was the norm (default) situation then I’m sure the problem would be solved.
See how the above “donor objectors” become amenable to the idea once they’re offered a fist full of post mortem dollars.
Perhaps there could be a market for forward contracts in human organs. The contracts would trade publicly, and could perhaps be bundled together into organ agency securities which could be classified based on a persons age and other relevant qualities. The seller of an organ forward could then receive a sum of money which would be based on his or her remaining life-expectancy. Just a thought…
Matt
My opinion on this is that it’s inhuman for someone to kill someone for organs in order to save another. Where is the good in that? I can’t get why some morons are just too dense in the head themselves. Kill someone to save another, yes I’m sure that makes a lot of sense. Whats the point too? There isn’t any.
Is it really ethical to harvest organs from individuals incapable of giving consent?(Infants, recently deceased, vegetative.) The doctors, from a utilitarians view is immoral and are going against the humanity formulation by using a, lets just say for arguments sake a brain-dead man. The doctors are using him as a means only for the sole purpose of saving a woman who has both kidneys critically damaged.