I just want to make sure you understand what’s happening. This isn’t a program where a prisoner becomes an organ donor after they die and gets time off for good donation. This is program where a prisoner agrees to give up a kidney or part of their liver (or their eye?) in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Is that clear to you?
You would think that would be obvious, since death is already a way of getting out of prison, you don’t need to also agree to donate your organs.
You must let the Invisible Hand of the Free Market enter your body and soul
Why stop at prisoners? Your kidneys aren’t healthy enough to be donated? Maybe your son has two perfectly good ones. Maybe if he ever wants to see his dad again, he donates in your place. A good deed is a good deed, right?
Maybe if your son and wife each donate a kidney, you get out right away.
Maybe it doesn’t even need to be a relative. Maybe if you’re a wealthy criminal you can just pay a few desperate people to donate a few organs on your behalf. Look at you, facilitating so many good deeds!
Would never happen…
To be fair, when I hear “donate organs,” I assumed they meant signing up for a donor registry after they died. That’s the way I usually hear “organ donator” used. I actually didn’t realize my mistake until I saw Beau of the Fifth Column’s video about it.
Which I want to link here because I think it might help the conversations. For @Bootb, I think it might help them understand the objections. For others, it goes over stuff I haven’t seen mentioned here.
In related news, here’s a medical journal floating the idea of using braindead women as incubators like the axolotl tanks in Dune.
What an age of wonders horrors we live in
Or the breeding “stumps” in Hellstrom’s Hive.
ETA: Hey! I was just reminded that Frank Herbert wrote that, too!
To tangent off both the “braindead women” story and the organ one-what if I could grow braindead people for parts? Would posters agree to it? Assume they’ll never and could never achieve sentience or even awareness. I don’t agree with either of the referenced stories, and I DO agree that organ donation should be the default unless opted out.
We’re headed there, but not with braindead people; I think the idea is to use genetically modified pigs, with your DNA being used to grow a custom organ inside the pig.
Hijack:
I don’t think braindead women are the way to do the gestational thing - there are a whole host of issues there. But I do think that we should be looking much more heavily into the sort of technology that would let us grow babies outside the body.
Obviously, start with livestock first, and don’t move on to humans until we can reliably grow all sorts of animals in artificial wombs. There are big implications for endangered species as well.
Women still die giving birth every day - not in large numbers, but on a daily basis, and obviously it’s an unimaginable tragedy every time. And, if we could safely and reliably do it, there would really be no reason not to.
Perhaps using botany. Like trees?
Not sure if that’s a reference to something, but no, I don’t see how trees would help. More like this:
That is quite interesting! I was making a silly reference to the old idea of finding a child under a cabbage leaf.
You are clearly ignorant of plant science. Babies are best grown in hydroponic cabbage patches.
Newsflash: The world is not that desperate for more methods to create babies. Our world population is unsustainable as it is.
I wonder what makes you think that this is about producing higher quantities of babies, rather than reducing the suffering caused by the natural method.
The world population has about doubled since my birth. It’s expected to get to 11 billion before the end of this century.
However, while population continues to grow, the rate of growth is slowing, and I’ve read some speculation that we might peak at the end of this century and begin to decline after.
I’m sure I’ll be dead long before so whatever, no soylent green for me.
I strongly suspect that any research in the area of baby incubators is done for the benefit and convenience of very rich people, and has little to do with “reducing the suffering caused by the natural method.”