As I read the OP, in order to be harvested you need to both have not opted out *and * have your family’s permission.
Edit: the relevant portion of one of the OP’s links;
(my bolding).
We all know where this road goes…“We’ve come for your liver.”
But seriously - sounds like a good policy. As to it being like seizure of property - a dead person can’t own anything legally, can they? So it’s up to their estate, I guess. Just changes the default assumption to start, is all.
And institutions appropriate stuff all the time - how do you think motorways get built?
How about a compromise:
If you opt-in, they take your organs regardless of what the family wants.
If you don’t, then they ask your executor (since you were silent on the issue, it would be like any other property of yours).
I don’t understand how the family can overrule the opt-in. If I make it clear I want to donate my organs, my wife can nix that when I’m dead?
That’s why it kind of surprised me that there isn’t more resistance to the idea - that there aren’t more people talking about ‘cold, dead hands’.
Of course - taxes are appropriation, I agree. But if we were trying to introduce taxes as a brand new concept today, I think we’d experience a bit of resistance.
Wow. That’s a fairly morally loaded position. “Good” people make the “right” decision and donate their organs. So those who decide not to donate their organs are “bad” people making the “wrong” decision?
Forgive the hijack, but would organs acquired in this program be screened somehow? Would there be any liability if someone got a transplant from a donor that had cancer?
Then- freaken just opt out. (Joining the pile on) 
Yes, I think we need to go to an Opt Out system.
Yes. I carry a donor card, but all this does is inform people of my wishes, so that should the worst happen (a) doctors know to get hold of my parents ASAP and (b) my parents can be in no doubt about what I want. But card or no card, if their (written?) permission cannot be obtained in time, I’m being buried intact.
I’m not quite sure that ‘had any objections’ actually tallies up with ‘giving permission’. Maybe I’m just playing with words, but maybe there’s a difference in what consent would be required from families.
I can’t see how there’s any difference from the current system.
A surprisingly deep question. It comes down to the perspective of the government versus its people. Are the people subjects or citizens? If they are subjects, and the government owns them, then clearly, it has the right to do as it wishes with their bodies. If, instead, they are free citizens, then what right does the government have to do with the only thing we are entirely sure we own?
In addition, I am entirely sure that nobody wants my organs. Trust me, they’re in bad shape on several levels. However, my medical record says little of the sort, and may not be found upon my death: I havn’t been to the doctor in far too long. Thus, an opt-out style, where people would harvest my organs routinely would simply pass my problems to another person, making them quite ill. Opt-In would at least pass better quality organs along.
Not directly comparable situations.
Blood can be stored far longer than organs, a small group of people can give blood many times, and people are much less freaked out by giving blood than organ donation.
As for the poor, they don’t choose to be poor and unable to pay. In any case, people are way more willing to part with tax money to pay for their care than they are an organ.
Now, on the one hand it seems rather harsh to restrict giving organs only to those who are themselves donors, yet on the other hand it seems pretty unfair for someone to be able to say “Give me an organ if I need it but you can’t ever use mine.”
I think people suggesting if you don’t like the idea, just opt out are missing (or glossing over) the nature of the objections they’re answering.
This isn’t intended to be an analogy, so please don’t treat it as one; suppose the government decided it was in everybody’s interest to track and monitor the whereabouts of individual citizens - and decided to implement some kind of tracking scheme - the possible operational details of which are not important - so there would be a record of where you went, what you did, etc. To sweeten the deal, it is presented as a new default, from which you can just opt out if you wish.
People would still have a problem with that - not because it means everybody was monitored (because they can just opt out, and not be monitored), but because it’s a case of government modifying rights and assuming more control.
As I say, I’m not going to press this as any kind of exact parallel to the notion of opt-out organ donation, except to say that I think the people uneasy with it are uneasy not because they personally don’t want their organs harvested on death (so the advice if you don’t like it, just opt out is misguided and inappropriate) - they’re uneasy because of what it means in terms of erosion of freedom, rights, etc.
Really, I’m actually quite surprised there aren’t more people (especially here) saying that organ donation is great - and there should be more of it - but that they have a problem with it on principle.
I can understand why some people take issue with the government modifying/assuming rights and consent as Mangetout says, but I think that argument is trivial compared to the issue at hand.
The government taking liberties and assuming control that affects its citizens as living people I would disagree with, and although the opt-out system is one of presumed consent and control by the government it wont ever really affect me as a person. Well, if it does, I’ll be beyond caring.
I still think that people have issue with thinking about their own mortality and voice it as their disatisfaction with the government’s choice. Maybe that’s a simplification of the issue, but it’s clear that I dont have problems with donation; I dont like the prospect of being brain-dead, but I know that if I could help someone I would. The scenario of presumed consent forces people who dont want to think about themselves in a similar situation to think about it.
Well said.
There is also the issue of how presumptive organ donation could be more easily abused by someone like Dr Shipman: don’t work so hard to save this person and you’ve got a set of organs to transplant. It’s for the greater good after all.
I carry an organ donor card, and my family are well aware of my wishes anyway if it goes missing.
Aren’t most organ donors the victims of trauma? When they’re brought into the A&E, wouldn’t they be attended to by at least 3 sets of specialists (A&E, anaesthesia, radiology) and several nurses and other allied health professionals? For your hypothetical to arise wouldn’t the three teams of doctors and all the various other staff have to have some kind of understanding and be complicit in the conspiracy?
I find it hard to believe that in this day and age of multidisciplinary medicine that you would have such a situation arise.
But at the moment, people being apathetic, or ignorant of organ donation results in there being a shortage of donated organs. An opt-out system might encourage people to take responsibilty for the use of their organs after death. Though it would only be fair for there to be a decent and ongoing education of people via their doctors as to the implications of the opt-out programme.
Even if every suitable organ was “harvested” (does anyone else find that word disturbing when applied to human organs?) there would STILL be a shortage of organs. It will make more available, yes, but not enough to solve the shortage.
It’s not that trivial. The question really comes down to a matter of if the government owns its citizens or not. If they don’t, what right or ability do they have to dictate what happens to their bodies after death? If they do, why limit it to that?
I feel like I’ve heard that before. And I disagree with your contention that even if it’s wrong, it should matter because you are dead. As Mangetout says, that suggests people are government property.
That’s true and very unfortunate. But people’s bodies are their own, so even if they use them ignorantly, that’s their right. I don’t think that they should be legislated into making the “right” decision.
Once you’re dead, you’re no longer a citizen, you’re a pile of cooling meat. You don’t exist any more, and have no right to own property. I don’t think the opt out plan is an imposition on the rights of citizens, because no citizens are involved.
Nitpick: If you’re “cooling meat” you’re no longer an organ donor - donors have to be kept warm and breathing until the organs are removed. /Nitpick
There is much historical precedent for people being able to determine the disposition of their own corpse. Such things as where someone wishes to be buried, whether or not to donate their body for medical research, and so on. Dead people have no rights and own nothing, yet a legal will has legal force regarding disposition of the possessions of the now non-citizen. Justify making an exception for bodyparts.