ISTR that Michael Baden, former medical examiner for New York City, described some rather delicate negotiations with Orthodox Jewish families over legally-mandated autopsies. Many Orthodox, however, will not permit autopsies that fall outside that requirement, e.g. when the autopsy is requested merely for educational purposes.
I wish I had your confidence. Unfortunately, supply and demand don’t seem to have much impact as market forces these days; see the price of oil for example. The tissue banks are not going to give up their golden goose easily, and are entirely capable of manipulating the market to create shortages and prop up the fees they are accustomed to.
Spanish surgeons get paid a salary and a variable plus which is a function of how many “guard shifts” they pull.
That’s all. No “per kidney” fee, no “per stitch” fee; in a month in which a doctor had no guards he’d pull as much if he spent it up to his elbows in guts as if he spent it in office visits - or if he happened to be off (vacation, sick leave, personal leave).
Spain has considered “medical care” a “basic right which can not be denied to your worst enemy” by explicit law since at least 1886; there are medieval laws which consider denying “things which are necessary to life” as equal to murder. This idea that human life is something you can put in terms of pennies is… it makes my head hurt, and I’m more used to hearing you guys than most Spaniards.
Okay, so Spain is more progressive on the medical front than I gave credit for. Thank you.
To be clear, Nava, I also have a visceral dislike of the monetizing of medical care. Were it up to me, the American system would be much more like yours–also, everyone would selflessly agree to organ donation, and organ transplant recipients would be based only on need.
That’s why I raised the notion of futures contracts–paying living people immediately for the potential use of their organs after death.
I assume that these Orthodox naturally refuse to use the services of any medical provider who participated in or observed a non-forensic autopsy as part of his education. :rolleyes: Or one who’s studied medical texts containing anatomical information gleaned from like autopsies.
Denying other people their religious views is in effect imposing your views on religion on other people.
I have the donor box checked on my driver’s license but if the state even tried to legislate it, I would immediately change my donor status.
I think the notion is that organ donation would only occur at death and would be highly regulated so that there would be no such thing as a “market” in organs.
Thats ridiculous.
For the greater good of society has been mentioned. It is somewhat problematic however in it’s implementation, after all the Mayan society ripped thousands of beating hearts out of living people for the greater good of society as they saw it.
In terms of a human corpse, it has immediate value to some and intrinsic value to family and friends of the deceased. If it was a survival situation and the body was used for food that seems like a acceptable use of the body. But part of the difference between the emergency survival situation and the current organ donation program is the relation ship between the deceased, the family and friends of the deceased and the person receiving the transplant.
That disconnect is a major issue. Contrast the current organ donation procedure as opposed to a (almost impossible) situation where the 2 (donor and receiver) was on some expedition together and one died and the only way for the other to survive was a emergency organ transplant.
That disconnect must be overcome, possibly through fostering relationships between the saved person and the friends and family of the deceased. If that can be done, then people may be much more willing to donate.
Would this “death” you speak of be when patient’s heart stops beating, when certain brain activity ceases, or something else? Would you endore overiding the patient’s living will and/or the wishes of the next-of-kin to terminate life support in order harvest the organs sooner? What if continuing support would render one or more of the organs non-viable for transplant?
This is absolutely the reason that motivates most people who don’t want to donate organs, whether they admit it or not. Unfortunately, nobody has ever made any effort to publicly debunk this idea, and so people continue believing it.
How disturbing. I understand what you’re saying, but at the same time the thought of denying someone needed medical care that can be provided by an organ of mine after my death just because I’m mad at the government…that’s just too hard for me to wrap my head around. You’d be punishing the wrong person, IMHO.
I support an opt-out system, and feel that both organ donation and/or donation to science if possible is really the only ethical choice for me. We all benefit from medical advances, from living in a healthy population, and besides, I’ll be dead; what do I need any of my organs for?
I think we respect living wills and next of kin concerns, considering that the money would only be paid upon harvest, I’m not as concerned about next of kin concerns.
Hrmm, for me it was the heeby jeebies. That and because i was toying with the idea of freezing myself like Disney, then i realized taht by the time they can ressurect me, you will probably be able to get a prescription for a new kidney from a doctor and have it installed at Meineke.
That is a sacrifice I am willing to impose on the folks that need organs. Once we live in a state that will mandate organ donation, the plight of the organ recipient becomes the least of my concerns.
We also all benefit from the civil liberties (including freedom of religion). In the long run we’re all dead but our society will survive all of us. What sort of society survives me is more important to me than organ donation.
And yet despite your righteous headache, you DO pay doctors, you pay nurses, your spend money to build hospitals, you buy medicine and pacemakers and all manner of things. Furthermore, if you’re able to work, you’re expected to pay for it - it may be paid through taxes, but paid it must be. If I, as a foreigner, arrive in Spain and need medical care, I will be expected to pay for it.
Spain pays for medical care. You might have a system (like most first world countries do) where it’s paid for by single payer insurance, but pay you must, and the government of Spain and the autonomous regions do make budget decisions where they weigh the pennies against the health of the citizenry.
Duplicate post, deleted.
Do your own damn debate research!
The OP is fishing for data and arguments on next month’s high school Public Forum Debate topic. Make them do their own work.
But is it really your sacrifice to make? Seems you get to do nothing at all - in this hypothetical, being dead and all - to make a point no one will hear, and in the end, someone else who is still alive suffers for it.
But if everyone thought the way you did, and if the state were to mandate organ donation, the extreme hypothetical is a society where many people become ill and die due to lack of donations of organs that aren’t being used (by the dead potential donors) as some sort of protest. If you’re more concerned about the society that survives you, then what does it matter what happens to your organs once you die, and why would you make such an individualistic choice as to withdraw your organ donorship if the state mandated it? It kind of seems like those two concepts oppose each other.
Personally, I don’t think the difference in my life between an opt-in and opt-out system is a burden on my civil liberties.
I’d be curious to see if there are any studies comparing the cost of promoting organ donation registries in countries like the US and Canada in efforts to find enough donors versus the cost of an opt-out program and the dissemination of information regarding that option to the population. Is the former more expensive, in the long run? And if it is, where is that money coming from, and would it not be better placed in, for example, medical research or something? And if it isn’t…well, again, what’s the impact?
FWIW, my best friend is alive today because of an organ transplant, which clearly affects my view on this. If her donor had said no - it was a live transplant - as was his right, I’d be rather more lost today.
Why is there even a “market force”? I understand from your post that tissue banks are private entities. The solution seems easy to me : they become public entities. Kidneys, skin, bones, whatever, are attributed according to the highest need/most compatible receiver. If the organ ends up going to a private entity (a private hospital, I would guess), they pony up to cover the costs.
I can’t understand why the market would be involved at any point in organ donation. And if someone asserts that it should be for whatever reason, then yes, surely the estate of the deceased (or even the future deceased when he signs up for organ donation after his death) should get his fair share of the profits (read : most of it). That’s a bit ludicrous, if you ask me, but if some intermediary benefits from organ donation, surely the donor should too. What would you think if money willed to charities had to go through private companies that would keep their share of it? The principle seems quite similar to me.