Not at all. I don’t like that anymore than putting in their terms of service that they get all of your money after you die, unless you specifically opt out.
As usual with simplistic binarisms, this misses most of the shades of gray in this debate.
Personally, i don’t think that there’s any contradiction between a belief in individual rights and a belief that your body can serve others after you die. I believe that people have natural rights. I believe that those rights only exist for each person while that person is alive. A corpse has no property, and no rights. Simple, really.
You don’t have to agree with me, but your contrast between individual rights and “communally owned” here is, at the very least, open to different interpretations, and at worst, ridiculously simplistic.
So their rights to run their businesses aren’t sacrosanct. See, there are tons of shades of grey in the world.
In my system, they cannot, just as certain assets of people are often protected from seizure. It wouldn’t be hard to simply make a slight change to the law that says organs cannot be counted as assets in any kind of claim. That said, would you support my version of organ selling?
Prioritization based on donation is wrong. I am an organ donor, I donate blood whenever I get the opportunity. This does not make me a better person. It does not make me more entitled to organs or blood than someone who is unable or unwilling to donate blood or organs. It’s a matter of personal choice for all parties involved.
As to the question of opt-in or opt-out, why is this a question of legislation? Just fill out the form, check the box, opt-in and keep your nose out of mine and everyone else’s business. Support organ donation, discuss it, encourage your friends and family but don’t presume to legislate a personal preference.
I’m solidly in the donor camp but I have the same objections as Oakminster and Shodan. I’m uncomfortable with the state owning my dead flesh by default. I should not have to do ANYTHING to prevent the state, the hospital, or anyone else from taking possession of my corpse.
The Opt-out default being suggested has the potential for nefarious misuse at worst and at best makes some of us leery. Add that to the fact that default donation would expand government in that the state would have to handle the body, organs, etc. or conduct oversight to ensure that the hospital handled the body, organs, etc.
OR
We could stick with the Opt-in system and do our best as individuals to encourage organ donation.
Sorry, but if you’re not willing to give up your blood and organs so that others can live, you shouldn’t get to benefit from donation before the people who are.
If it’s a personal choice for all the parties involved, as you suggest, then they can make that choice knowing the consequences. And one of the consequences should be that people who refuse to donate can be bumped back in the queue for organs by people who will donate.
Of course there should be exceptions for people who are forbidden by the donor agencies (Red Cross, etc.) from donating. But if you make your own decision not to donate, then bad luck.
All else being equal (and it never is), people who donate are better than people who don’t. This is my opinion, but it’s not changing.
mhendo, jsgoddess, I see your points and in the context of a different situation like taxes, I’d probably agree with you.
In this case though, I think judgments like that just muddy the waters. We had a thread not so long ago about whether or not we should be able to choose where our organs go. It’s not a choice because, frankly, it’s too much damned work during a time-sensitive process.
I mean sure, if I know I’m heading down hill and already in the hospital, there’s time for screwing around. Lot’s of us die suddenly.
If the government as the right to make a law about prioritization, I should have the right to narrow my preferences. I’d rather my organs not go to child molesters. Come to think of it, if I had my druthers, I wouldn’t give my organs to Liberals, to anti-gay people, to pro-gun control people, to any anti-hunters, to a member of PETA, to people who drive in the left lane instead of just using it for passing.
I could do that but it would make me a DICK and it would complicate what should be a simple process. I’m not using my organs when I’m dead, donating them is an acknowledgment that other people are basically good and that even if we don’t see eye to eye on anything, I’d rather have someone live than die.
I don’t see how that contradicts what I said. Donating organs isn’t an ethically neutral choice. Trying to help others isn’t morally neutral.
I didn’t say anything about prioritization; I simply disagree whether donation reveals a better person.
Right, but the process of determining the list of organ recipients is not time-sensitive. The list is already sitting there, and the person at the top is waiting hopefully for a heart, or a liver, or whatever.
Nothing about my argument would mess with the time-sensitive aspects of organ donation, because my system would simply ensure that the person at the top of the list is someone who has agreed to be an organ donor, and that non-donors would only make it to the top of the list after all donors have been served.
As for your other arguments about choosing who your organs go to, they are fundamentally different in nature from my position, because mine is a narrowly-focused policy. It says, very simply, if you’re not willing to give X, then you should also recognize that you might not get to receive X when you need it. It doesn’t ask any questions outside of X; it doesn’t care about your sex, your politics, your age, nothing.
That’s a fair and logical point.
I’m saying that I think if ANY stipulations are made about the worthiness of recipients, it opens the debate to other aspects of worthiness, hence the rest of my post. Your stipulation seems the least convoluted, to wit it may be the most worthy.
I’m just not comfortable attaching any strings to my donation. Probably for the same reason that the Opt-out system and attaching monetary value to organs bothers me. I’d rather strive for impartiality because I don’t trust the collective judgment of who is and isn’t worthy.
Oh my, I’ve once again tacked on some baggage to your point and I’m sorry. I guess it boils down to, I think the stipulation you’re making is out of line and if you get to make yours, we should all be able to attach limiters.
Sorry, that didn’t really advance the debate did it? I s’pose we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
I realise I’m arriving late to this discussion and certainly not saying anything new, but for me, the sticking point with this proposal is the idea that the state can just appropriate something merely because I’m dead.
If that can be done to my organs, why not my possessions? Sure, they’re part of the estate, but only because that’s the way things currently work (and we’re debating changing the way things work - so why not my possessions too?).
Why wouldn’t it be equally acceptable to declare that the state can appropriate and redistribute my worldly goods when I die?
Their value to my next of kin? Not everything I own, that they may wish to keep, has any intrinsic value, so it can’t just be that.
It doesn’t matter whether I can be said to own my body, or whether I am assumed to no longer exist to have a claim, the state should not be allowed to wade in and scoop it up, regardless how expedient this might be.
For the record, I am a fully opted-in organ donor, but I do not believe that is a choice the state should ever be able to make on my behalf.
The only problem I would have with this is people who don’t want to donate because of religious reasons. How would that be handled?
No differently. You, like everyone else, get to make the choice that your conscience (and, in this case, your religion) dictates. You just need to accept that, having made the choice not to donate, you don’t get to receive, either. (Edit for clarity: You do get to receive, but only after donors have been taken care of first.)
To tell the truth, any religion that does not allow me to donate my own organs to save other people’s lives, yet allows me to receive organs from another donor to save my life, it pretty fucking hypocritical in my opinion.
And if it’s a proselytizing religion, it seems like it’s letting someone do evil on your behalf.
This has come up a couple of times already in this debate, and we still haven’t had one person speak up and say that they won’t donate organs after death for religious reasons, but that they would be willing to accept a post-mortem organ from someone else.
I think that religious objections will fall into two categories. Those strongly devout, who don’t want to donate, and on the basis of their objections would also be unwilling to accept an organ, since that’s just asking someone to perform an evil that you yourself condemn. That’s fine.
But those that would accept and won’t donate are just hypocrites hiding behind religion for some other purpose.
Several people have been against the idea of opt-out donations, mostly on property/personal rights grounds and anti-government intrusion grounds. That’s fine, under an opt-out system anyone who wanted to could decline to take part in the national donor pool. I just don’t believe that there are many people who have genuine religious concerns against organ donation, but would expect to have organs available for them if needed. So far, none have stood up on this board.
Would people view this differently if it was asked in a different way? Ignoring children for the time being, what would the naysayers think if it was called something like “organ insurance” where you could sign up for free on your 18th birthday and have reasonable guarantees to any organs you may need, with a stipulation of your participation that you donate your own organs after death? Those not on the ‘Organ Insurance Plan’ would have to hope for some oversupply or a living donor or some other means of getting organs. Would that change anyone’s mind? This gives willing donors a carrot in knowing the system would support them, gives the stick to those that would take an organ but won’t give, and still preserves everyone’s free will. I realize this is a bit off topic from the original post, but I think it solves the problem just as well.
Maybe I’m reading this bit wrong, but it sounds like you’re saying an opt-out system is a solution for people who object to an opt-out system.
Whoo hoo, a thread with legal questions in which I actually have some relevant facts!. Just a few days ago, I started a thread in GQ, What is the legal status of a corpse? I had no idea this thread was running.
What I’ve gleaned through the provided information is:
- A corpse in not property under common law.
- A corpse is not property of the estate of the person who died.
Shodan should be happy – there is seemingly no legal basis for the Federal government to step in and begin seizing corpses. Property law is and has been defined state by state, and in what Federal case law there has been, the courst have consistently referred back to state laws in their decisions.
OTOH, it seems quite possible that individual states could indeed mandate organ harvesting whenever feasible within their own borders. The way I put it in that thread was "…these cases seem to have been decided by fairly straightforward interpretations of existing law rather than some unenumerated rights that families have that are in conflict with state laws."
There’s also some interesting links in that thread that discuss how a corpse might become property.
As to the OP question in this thread, I would say yes, organ harvesting should be done in all cases where medically feasible. The family does not own the corpse, the estate does not own the corpse, and all the burial and dignity stuff IMO is at best quasi-religious claptrap that need not be considered. I’m sure a whole lot of people will disagree with me, but you are wrong. 
I know I’m coming late to the discussion, but wasn’t this matter settled in the case of Bernie Lomax v. Comedy (1989)?
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Are they specious? Doctors and medical insurers have already shown that they are prepared to, even inclined to, take all my money and physical possessions, including a lien against my house, mostly because they want money. Are we confident that they would behave entirely differently about my organs, which they also want?
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Well, the roofer gives me a quote in advance – never had a doctor or insurance company do that. Instead, I sign a piece of paper agreeing to pay an unspecified amount for treatment so that I don’t die, and afterward they tell me whatever price they think they can get out of me. With no prices given upfront, I can’t comparison-shop, even if I wanted to do so during a heart attack.
And “owed” versus “want” is semantic – I’ll bet everyone who is owed money also wants it, right? My point was that they’ve demonstrated they don’t look at my income and say “this is an appropriate charge that will leave him with enough money to have quality of life.” If they look at my income at all, or just base it on the community I live in, they say “this is the maximum we can wring out of him.”
I’m not some paranoid who thinks doctors actually plan to kill people for organs. But I wouldn’t be surprised if occasionally hospitals or large insurance companies made fairly arbitrary determinations of “quality of life” when deciding how much treatment to allot to persons with poor prognoses, and then felt little disturbance to their consciences when harvesting organs from those who did not thrive under such minimal treatment.