Should "dead donor" rules for organ donation be revised?

Great Debates
41

And yet, they choose to do it. There are other career opportunities available to them. They’re not pressured into taking that job because they’re told that if they don’t, the government will let their houses burn down or their families be murdered by terrorists and street gangs.

I have no objection to people choosing to risk their lives for the sake of others. I object to the notion that I, or anyone else, am obligated to lay down my life for the sake of another.

Correct. The purpose of government is to serve the people. The purpose of corporations is to make money, either by taking it directly from the people or by monetizing the people and selling them off to other corporations.

I would be a fool to choose to reject a charitable offer if doing so meant I would die.

If other people want to risk their lives for my sake, then I’m not going to refuse that offer. I do not, however, insist that they’re obligated to do so. Is it your belief that the police should prioritize protecting the lives of a cop’s family over the lives of a civilian’s family? If two adjacent houses are on fire, should the firemen let one burn down with women and children inside because their neighbor was a fireman and they weren’t?

Dedicate our nation’s scientific apparati to making organ cloning safe, reliable, and available to all within the next five years, and the potential for shortage-induced problems ends.

42

Your whole argument about organ donation, and your whole argument against a system such as i’ve been advocating, is based on a false premise.

43

The system you advocate permits for a living person to be killed for the sake of harvesting their organs.

44

No, it does not.

45

Then why does it occur that “dead” people who have been scheduled to be harvested for their organs have proceeded to wake up during the procedure and continue to live thereafter?

46

That was an error. No one was deliberated killed just to harvest their organs.

Sure, sometimes people are thought dead that are not. Extremely rare. But I’d rather wake up on a operating table, surrounded by doctors- that wake up in a crematorium or buried alive.

47

“That was just an error” is considered an impermissible excuse by those who seek to abolish the death penalty on the basis that someone might be wrongly executed.

Why is it permissible that some people might be wrongly vivisected?

48

They’d be dead anyway, you know.

49

This is false. Lots of people are deliberately killed to harvest their organs. It’s not legal, and it doesn’t happen in hospitals, but it happens. This is why legalizing the organ trade is of paramount importance. A price floor of zero creates huge shortages, people dying on organ waiting lists, and a brutal black market that encourages murder.

50

But then, it doesnt matter if they are Donors or not. :rolleyes:

*Nothing to do *with what we are talking about. No American Doctor kills a patient just 'cause the patient has a donor card.

51

/ducks and runs

52

No, what I’m saying is most insurance will not cover transplant testing or surgery out of network. If I wanted to register in Mesa, AZ, all the costs would be out of pocket, along with the cost of transportation to/from there.

There is no cost to be on UNOS.

I know people who were told if they could afford to be cross listed, do it as their chances of obtaining an organ in their area was close to nil.

53

To be honest, that’s almost as bad as my initial incorrect interpretation, and it’s Exhibit #23,849 in the case for universal health care.

I understand that the system works best if there are regions for UNOS, and that it would probably be impossible to consider the whole national pool of recipients for every single organ. Organ transplant is a time-sensitive thing, and time spent looking for a recipient and then flying the organ across the country could, in many cases, possibly lead to the organ going to waste and no-one getting help.

I also understand that insurance companies don’t want to fly people all over the country for transplants, as that would get expensive very quickly, although the cost of a plane ticket is probably trivial compared to the cost of the operation itself.

But i think that, if a patient is willing to take care of her own transportation issues, health insurers should be required to cover the testing and surgery, no matter where it happens. If there’s an organ in Boise, and you’re the next best recipient, then if you’re willing to get yourself to Boise for the operation, it should be covered by your insurance. For something as important as a transplant, that should be mandatory. Basically all insurance policies cover out-of-network emergencies (if you’re hit by a car and taken to the nearest ER, for example); well, an organ transplant is, in some cases, no less an emergency situation than a car crash.

54

Sure. At one time, it would have been unthinkable to amputate a healthy limb, but now, people with certain kinds of injuries or neurological disorders have had healthy limbs they can’t control well amputated in favor of prostheses that will work better. It’s a very narrow constrict, but it happens. And women with the BRAC genes have has as yet still healthy breasts prophylactically removed. That would have been unthinkable as recently as the 1970 (or maybe even the 1980s). 100 years ago, reconstructive surgery was brand new. Elective surgery was a redefinition of harm. Removing a healthy kidney from you certainly harms you, but if it’s to save someone else, and you have consented, it is something that is done fairly frequently. Bone marrow transplants are painful for the donor, and have a non-zero risk, but they are done. Sometimes people with terrible infections are given antibiotics that will harm them, but it is judged to be a lesser harm.

So, actually, doctors do harm all the time. Blood draws are painful, and have a non-zero risk, but are balanced by a benefit. That’s the trick in redefining harm-- asking what good balances it out, and does the good outweigh the harm. You could probably write a graduate thesis on the redefinition of harm over the centuries.
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OK, you make a good point, and I hope to address it without getting bogged down in semantics.

I think it’s entirely appropriate to continually re-evaluate circumstances. If new diseases are discovered, it’s appropriate to look at all available options. If new treatments are discovered, it’s appropriate to incorporate them into patient care. If a patient’s condition changes, it’s appropriate to ask whether treatment is becoming overzealous. And if the imminent-death standard is handled very, very carefully such that it’s about how to pull the plug - NOT WHEN!! - then I think it could provide some comfort to dying people and their families.

But I also see a serious potential for abuse if it’s not handled carefully. There’s always a temptation to abandon the afflicted and rationalize it with fancy rhetoric. Consider this exercise in devil’s advocacy:
I seem to recall reading an article (in Newsweek, I think - but it’s been a while) wherein the author went back over all the paperwork after her husband died of some kind of cancer and found that he had received $6xx,xxx.xx of medical care in the year and a half between the time of his diagnosis and his eventual death. (She gave the exact figure, down to the penny; but like I said, it’s been a while.) If that’s somewhat typical and costs are assumed to be linear, then getting terminally ill people to die just one week earlier (1.28% of 52+26) would be a significant savings. And if we spent that money on people who are actually going to get better (or education or birth control or handguns or whatever your personal vision of utopia requires), then everyone* would be better off.

  • well, almost everyone

PS.

[QUOTE=Chetumal]

[QUOTE=truthseeker3]
I’ll keep my eyes
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/ducks and runs
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Alright, I guess you can have them - but you have to wait until I’m actually dead. No fair chloroforming me just because I have cancer or whatever.