What nonsense. There are well-established legal procedures for handing a dead person’s property.
Actually, extending these mechanisms to the dead person’s body (i.e. letting the estate sell your organs just like it can sell your CD collection) would solve the shortage problem – few people are going to turn down easy money for their heirs.
BZZZTTT
It would be the only way left for me to opt out of the system. Rendering my organs unusable would go hand-in-hand with a campaign of protest, etc. I would certainly make my reasons known, and, I imagine, so would others who chose to do this. If the donees wish to increase the organ supply, have them lobby the government to change its policy. I would think that organizations representing organ recipients could get such a law as this changed in fairly short order, considering that the law would have been passed for their benefit.
Not at all, given that the stated intent is to sabotage an abusive usurpation of power by government.
Personally, I don’t care what happens to my organs, BUT I know my parents do, because of their religious beliefs and past experiences.
I had a sister who died and underwent a post-mortem, and I know the anguish it caused my mother when it was revealed that in some similar cases at the hospital organs were retained (eventually we found out that my sister wasn’t one of those cases).
To my parents it is important that we are buried intact and as soon as possible after death, they would also have issues with organ removal while ventilation is occurring, as to them death occurs with the last breath.
Because it would cause them so much distress, I would opt out if the system was changed. They are the people my death will affect most, and I want that to be as easy as possible for them.
Lib, a quick question for you.
The law necessarily makes (rebuttable) presumptions about what people want all the time. Since we’re focused on death, let’s consider the passing of the deceased’s property.
Every state in the union has an intestacy scheme, a system that assumes the deceased wanted his property to be distributed in a certain way if the deceased did not leave a will. Typically, the property will pass to the spouse first, then to the kids, then to the deceased’s parents, then to more distant relatives.
Are these schemes violative of a man’s consent under your worldview?
After all, the deceased can alter the distribution by preparing a will. And if there is no will, the property’s got to get distributed somehow.
I see practical problems with an opt-out system, problems that have been pointed out by others in this thread. But I fail to see how it invades the deceased’s ability to consent. Like an intestacy scheme, it simply makes an assumption of the deceased’s wishes when the deceased did not make his wishes known one way or the other. And it’s a plausible assumption: most people probably are willing to donate organs, but never quite get around to opting in, just as most people probably wish their property to pass to their spouses at death.
A corpse has no right to free exercise of religion.
Usurpation of power from who? Abuse of who?
A carcass has no power to usurp. If it can be recycled to save a human life then the government has a moral imperative to see that it’s done,
People need to let go of the superstion that a cadaver is a person with rights.
I am an organ donor, says so on my driver’s license.
The way some posters here have laid claim to my body after death bothers me greatly. If that’s the way most people feel about a selfless gift - entitled - I am seriously rethinking my stance.
If you would honestly do that, then it was never a selfless gift to begin with.
Irrelevant. Your original claim was:
I have cited irrefutable evidence that, yes, the government does have an obligation to humor superstitious fantasies. QED.
Abuse and usurpation of the deceased’s estate, obviously. What you propose is no different than theft of the deceased’s goods.
As I noted earlier, getting over our squeamishness and treating the corpse as part of the deceased’s estate, to be sold or given away as directed under established estate law, would solve the problem.
I hardly think that such claims by one or two posters are either reflective of most people’s opinions or worth being bothered about.
Nope. Wrong. If you feel entitled, then it’s not a selfless gift.
If you feel it’s conditional then it’s not selfless.
A body is not part of an estate and an estate has no rights anyway.
The moral imperative to save human life trumps any obligation to humor superstious beliefs about dead bodies.
A conditional gift can absolutely be selfless. It’s just not unconditional.
For example, I die and in my will, leave $5000 in a college-education-only trust fund for a young cousin. Selfless? Sure, I wasn’t motivated by concern for myself. Heck, by your logic, I don’t even exist anymore, so it can’t be anything but selfless. Conditional? You betcha.
What about attorny client privilege? Doctor/Patient confidentiality? Wills? Some things live on even after death.
Marc
Leaving aside the ethical issues of whether or not to automatically harvest organs I was wondering how we could implement such a system. I don’t believe the medical community is capable of implementing a national donor registration so that leaves us with the government.
Will these be state laws or would they be federal laws? If there were federal laws passed that made organ donation the default would it be constitutional? Are there any medical doctors or bio-ethicist who are calling for automatic organ donation?
Marc
The only real problems I see with the system as it currently stands are the next-of-kin override option and the fact that people just don’t fucking talk about it before the time comes.
Yes, I believe the body that gets left behind is just a shell, but I don’t think it’s just a rotting piece of garbage. And neither do most people, which is why we have funereals. When someone dies, we don’t just wrap 'em in newspaper and dump 'em in the landfill. No, we wash them, dress them in their best clothes, fix their hair nice and put makeup on them. Because they’re people, not garbage. Dead people, yes, but people nonetheless.
You think funereal rites are stupid superstitious bullshit? Fine, you’re entitled to your opinion. But that’s all it is…your opinion. You don’t get to dictate what other people think on the subject, or whether their opinions are valid or not. That’s just not how it works in a free country. Deal with it.