As a biologist working in a hospital in Canada, I have to say that giving organs really completely changes many patients lifes and often save them. Donor compatibility is hard to find, therefore you need a lot more donors then recievers (not to say that posthumous donation needs to be transplanted quite fast.

Good thread by the way :)

@Ghostmaker "healthcare providers to not be under enough financial pressure." Hospitals promoting that they have the most cable channels for the patient, or the latest MRI. Bidding wars over insurance contracts, choosing between pressuring doctors into discharging patients before they should, or eating the cost because the patient will not be able to pay for a longer stay. Doctors forced to stop accepting medicare and some insurance plans because they can't pay for overhead at the rates they're paid. Most care providers are cutting were they can and have ampale compitition. The ones not under pressure are the insurance companies. Most states have only 2-3 companies providing medical coverage, some with only 1 or 2, and most state commissions just rubber stamp rate increases. The last I heard most insurance companies are doing well.

Jesus ghost.... a price on organs? You don't think that might... encourage illegal activity? At all?

Anyway my opinion on organ donation is that you should do it.

I mean if you're dead you're dead. Your heart won't help anyone decomposing in a coffin.

Btw Ghost have you heard of Joseph Stiglitz?

@Peterwiggen- in that case I will have to read it, i think there was some other movie though, I didnt actually see it cause it looked ridiculous something about reposessing organs or something.

@Thucy- or how will a cremated heart help you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_theft

I'm digging that opt-out program.

Personally, I will be donating when I die.

At least my organs, maybe leave the rest for an awesome viking funeral.

But, maybe not, depends on if I'll have money to pay for the viking funeral when I die.

@Kingdroid: A viking funeral seems like a good way to go, but the enviro-mental-ists would probably stop you. B-(

SpeakerToAliens that wikipedia article about organ theft was interesting. Do you think that an opt-out organ donation system might increase the incidence of organ theft? Could it be possible that accident victims might be killed in order to harvest their organs?

@ Draugnar:

"Jamie - the national database only works if the person can be identified. What happens when a John or Jane Doe come in dead and they only have a couple hours to pull the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, cornea, etc.? Do you take them even though the body hasn't been identified yet?"

In that case I suggest we err on the side of caution, and *not* take the organs. However in most cases, when someone dies, their body can easily be identified. The majority of people who die, do not die in serious accidents which disfigure them beyond recognition. So this would only apply in a small proportion of deaths.

"No, it must be an opt in for religious reasons. I am a donor, so don't view this as some personal vendetta. I fully believe in donating and my old minister donated his entire body to research when he died of a rare cancer so the scientists could study everything and hopefully use what they learn to find a cure. But some religions believe that you won't enter the afterlife if your body isn't intact."

That's fine. If that's their belief, they can opt out.

I've dealt with your issue of bodies who can't be quickly identified, and as far as I can see this resolves your issue of religious freedom, since it removes the risk of someone losing their organs against their wishes. So, are you now happy to support an opt-out system?


@ Ghostmaker:

ME: “Everyone has an equal right to good health”

YOU: "You are, once again, confusing a right with a privilege."

Disagree. Healthcare is such a basic requirement it should be universal. What's the point of modern civilisation if it can't even provide for people's health?

In Australia, it is opt-in with your drivers' license. I like the idea that Brazil does not allow you to receive organs if you are not a donor yourself - seems very fair.

Apparently (according to our resident Brazilian) Brazil does not have this law, and Speaker to Aliens was mistaken.

Can you check your source, Speaker, and possibly confirm which country you actually meant?

Spain, Austria and Sweden all have opt-out systems, according to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation

Yes, but we were also talking about a system where if you opt out, you are denied access to organs if *you* need a transplant. Speaker to Aliens thought that was the system in Brazil, but apparently he's wrong.

“Doing things out of economic deprivation and desperation is not a matter of 'choice'. It's about as much a matter of 'choice' as having poor people sell themselves into indentured servitude, or having poor families sell their children into sex slavery. That's the kind of 'choice' we're talking about. It's a matter of taking advantage of the vulnerable in conditions of desperation for the profit of the rich. The classic 'work or starve' "choice" that market ideologues offer up as their illusion of 'freedom'.“

You haven’t got a sense of proportion here. Selling an organ of a deceased family member, or a non-essential organ when you are alive is a pretty horrible thing to have reason to do, yes. On the other hand, the people who would be doing it are in a pretty terrible economic situation. What you want to do is quite simply to make the choice for them, that they must abide their economic situation. I’m not taking anything away from them by giving them a second choice. I’m not saying either situation is desirable, just that I would prefer to give people who are in that kind of situation a choice.

“Altruistic donation, as it currently is done, is a deeply personal thing. If it becomes a 'market', just like any other economic transaction, this demeans the enterprise and will turn people away from altruistic donations. Marketizing body parts would lead to barrages of advertisements by organ harvesters/brokers to pressure people to donate. This will also turn people off.”

You seem to have a very dim view of humanity. People can buy cancer drugs and nursing, but I am one of many who donate my money to help them do so. People can buy education, but people still give to universities. Even if people were able to buy organs, there would be those unable to afford them, and to them donors could give. Indeed, I would be able to help someone looking for a heart transplant now, rather than only when I die, by giving them the money to buy one.

“Define emergency care. Does a person who can't walk without being in extreme pain because she needs total hip replacement surgery qualify? Is that person going to wait around for a year to shop for the best 'deal'? What about the person with impacted teeth?

Emergency care is care where if an operation is not done immediately, the person will either die or suffer a significantly lower quality of life after treatment. If you are having a heart attack, you need emergency care, if you are in need of a hip replacement, you can phone up several providers to see who gives the best deal, and do a little research to see who will provide the cheapest operation right now. Shopping around needn’t take a year.

“One must also consider the fact that cosmetic surgery doesn't have to deal with the issue of defensive medicine. That is, if people are sick or injured, hospitals err on the side of caution and order a large number of tests to make sure they don't miss anything. This drives up costs. On the other hand, cosmetic surgery is allowed to get away with a lot of charlatans and scam artists who do botched jobs.”

Costs are higher if you are going to err on the side of caution, but that shouldn’t result in costs going up with time, because we always want to err on the side of caution. As for charlatans in cosmetic surgery, I cannot see how you think that that is relevant...

“@Ghostmaker "healthcare providers to not be under enough financial pressure." Hospitals promoting that they have the most cable channels for the patient, or the latest MRI. Bidding wars over insurance contracts, choosing between pressuring doctors into discharging patients before they should, or eating the cost because the patient will not be able to pay for a longer stay. Doctors forced to stop accepting medicare and some insurance plans because they can't pay for overhead at the rates they're paid. Most care providers are cutting were they can and have ampale compitition. The ones not under pressure are the insurance companies. Most states have only 2-3 companies providing medical coverage, some with only 1 or 2, and most state commissions just rubber stamp rate increases. The last I heard most insurance companies are doing well.”

Indeed, there is no free market in insurance in America, and that is a problem.

“Jesus ghost.... a price on organs? You don't think that might... encourage illegal activity? At all?”

See my previous comments to figle. Having organs on sale legally will reduce the amount of illegal activity. If there is a legal alternative to organ theft, that will make organ theft less common, just as we see with the legalisation of drugs, people stop going through the illegal channels.

“@ Ghostmaker:

ME: “Everyone has an equal right to good health”

YOU: "You are, once again, confusing a right with a privilege."

Disagree. Healthcare is such a basic requirement it should be universal. What's the point of modern civilisation if it can't even provide for people's health?”

We cannot provide for the health of all people all the time, but modern civilisation does provide for a great many people’s health much of the time, to an ever increasing degree.

A privilege is something which requires other people to do something for you. I have enjoyed the privilege of an education, and an allowance from my parents. A right does not require any positive action from another individual. Thus the “right to life”, as in the right not to be killed, is a genuine right, but health is a privilege.

The point of modern civilisation is that it grants people their rights and gives them the opportunity to interact in accordance to them to mutual benefit. Everyone benefits from that arrangement, and increasingly most people can provide for themselves health, food and shelter most of the time.

@Jamie - under the conditions specified (if the body isn't positively ID'd, no harvesting), I could back an opt-out program.

@All - Organ transplants are not healthcare. They are life extensions. If you want to say everyone has a right to good health, then where do you draw the line. Right now, we can keep someone alive on life support for years who, just a decade ago, would have died within days. We do transplants of all kinds of organs, including corneas to people born blind, that extend life for decades or improve the quality of someone's life, but these should not be viewed the same as basic innoculations for newborns or flu shots for the elderly. If a person was born blind then their "right" to be healthy does *not* include granting them that which nature deemed unnecessary and if a booze hound destroys his liver, then that "right" does not include getting a new one.

No, the "right" to health should be limited to reasonable and customary care and innoculations for illnesses that trouble the general populace or that would come with problematic dietary issues (i.e. scurvy) do to income/social status. Receiving a new organ to extend your life beyond what nature has decided is its limit is *not* a right.

@ Ghostmaker: "Selling an organ of a deceased family member, or a non-essential organ when you are alive is a pretty horrible thing to have reason to do, yes. On the other hand, the people who would be doing it are in a pretty terrible economic situation."

If enough people are in such a "terrible economic situation" that this would significantly impact the supply of transplant organs, then something is going wrong with the economy which goes way beyond the transplant issue. The economy should function in such a way that people do not find themselves in this terrible situation in the first place.

"We cannot provide for the health of all people all the time, but modern civilisation does provide for a great many people’s health much of the time, to an ever increasing degree."

Why can't we? I say it again, it's such a basic requirement it should be universal. If we can't ensure decent healthcare is universally available, we should divert resources towards healthcare until this is achieved.

"A privilege is something which requires other people to do something for you. I have enjoyed the privilege of an education, and an allowance from my parents."

Your allowance from your parents is a privelige, but once again, a decent level of education is a basic requirement and everyone should have access to it. I don't care whether you want to use the language of rights or not, but society has a duty to look after its members, and that includes a duty to see that a reasonable level of education is universally available.

@Jamie - Define reasonable level of education and reasonable healthcare. College is not a reasonable level of education. I don't believe everyone should go to college because I don't believe everyone has the ability to learn at that level. All intellects are not created equal and we should not waste resources on those who will not be improved by them.

Similarly, healthcare... I'm sure you disagree, but a drunken bum who destroys his liver does not have some right to get a new one. A crack baby has every right to get all the help we can provide it, but its crack whore mom has no right to get anything more than free help kicking the addiction if she so chooses. We have to stop coddling people and make them take responsibility for their actions. Yes, there are plenty of people who, through no fault of their own, are in dire circumstances. But there are also many who just don't give a fuck and they don't deserve our help.

"Opt outs are bad. What if the person opted out, but is a "John Doe" because their ID was destroyed or lost in an accident (a *very* common occurence). you would then be taking the organs of a donor who didn't want them taken for whatever reason."

you can simply not take organs from unidentified victims, you'd want to have a knowledge of their medical history anyway before taking an organ. Also i believe we live in a society based on respect for human life, the decision to opt-out goes against this respect.

I would have no problems with ignoring a corpse's right to it's body. The fact is it's no longer a person - however this does raise the question of when a person has died. There are similar shades of grey ass you get with the start of life (but life doesn't have particularly finely defined end-points...)

So, no problem with denying a person the right to decide what to do with their body... Is not their body their property? Should we then say they have no right to decide what to do with their estate? What makes their body different from their estate?

"So, no problem with denying a person the right to decide what to do with their body... Is not their body their property? " - not after death.

the fact is i'm willing to disregard a last will and testament. Now tell me Draug, how do you find support for the idea of a will while only using property rights to justify?

I find support for it *in law*.

So let me ask, what property doesn't move beyond death and what does? Is the body the only thing that suddenly ceases to be one's property even though they are dead?

And I should point out, I vehemently disagree that my body ceases to be my property once I'm dead. For to do that means that there is no reason for justice for the murdered as they no longer own the body that was killed.

That's wrong, because the did own the body until the point when it was murdered. That's a property violation, and people who violate property rights should be punished, n'est pas?

*they did

“If enough people are in such a "terrible economic situation" that this would significantly impact the supply of transplant organs, then something is going wrong with the economy which goes way beyond the transplant issue. The economy should function in such a way that people do not find themselves in this terrible situation in the first place.”

‘Should’- it would be nice if it did, but for all of human history it has not. I don’t see the problem in allowing people to sell their organs. If we reach a state where everyone is well enough off not to want to, it is irrelevant anyway.

“Why can't we? I say it again, it's such a basic requirement it should be universal. If we can't ensure decent healthcare is universally available, we should divert resources towards healthcare until this is achieved.”


Because we don’t know how to without dramatic reductions in the quality of life of everyone, and anyway, why make a special case for specific healthcare provision. Many things can improve health, such as having plenty of leisure time, a warm home, safer cars etc. Not all of them can be provided, we haven’t the resource, so you have to resort to a utility function, and now you are about to abandon everything except healthcare- including human happiness.

“Your allowance from your parents is a privelige, but once again, a decent level of education is a basic requirement and everyone should have access to it. I don't care whether you want to use the language of rights or not, but society has a duty to look after its members, and that includes a duty to see that a reasonable level of education is universally available.”

Why?

So one minute you own your body and then next you don't? I disagree. What you own in life, you own in death. Debts not withstanding because you don't actually own whatever you are in debt for.