Do we own our organs?
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Think about it this way, homeless people are malnurished, which means that their organs reflect that.
No one will ever take organs from a homeless person unless it were a lst resort because the organs are in bad condition and chances are they are the reason said person died.
Its like getting a lung transplant from a 50 year old chain smoker.
No one will ever take organs from a homeless person unless it were a lst resort because the organs are in bad condition and chances are they are the reason said person died.
Its like getting a lung transplant from a 50 year old chain smoker.
People will take an organ whereever they can get it if they are desperate enough. But organs that are not healthy are not used for donation in any case.
Be careful, as your reasoning is shaded with totalitarian elements. The problems encountered when one allows the state to defile the sanctity of the bodies of its citizens against their wishes far outweighs its potential benefits. Ultimately, individual liberties and familial authority become superseded by state authority for the sake of the "greater good". Of course, the concept of the "greater good", when applied to humans, rarely exceeds the boundaries set by the tribe. The tribe is foremost the family, and subsequent divisions vary amongst individuals, some preferring racial and ethnic boundaries, and other more universal individuals preferring religious boundaries.
Speaking for myself, I would not donate an organ unless it was to be used for a family member of mine who needed it desperately. I would certainly not donate my organs to somebody of another race, ethnicity, or religion, because my tribe is more valuable to me than all others. State-enforced organ donation, therefore, would come closest to working fluidly in a very homogeneous population. Unless you are a Marxist, allowing the state to undermine personal liberties, religious and cultural institutions, and familial authority on the basis of the "greater good" is an unwise idea.
Until we are able to grow or clone organs, people should only have a right to them until they are braindead, after which doctors should be able to take what they need for people that need organs. Which is more sacred, a lump of more or less dead flesh, or a living human?
This.
I would be happy to donate my organs to a friend or family member, but I refuse to allow myself to be pieced out to save random people who I may not even like.
In most places there is indeed a tax on inherited assets. If you want to argue that organs are just like any other asset, you're really arguing in favor of the government's power to take them and redistribute them as they wish.
Also, there are many sources of money. At the moment there is only one source for organs. So it is not necessary to take inheritance money in order to save the lives of starving children, but it is often necessary to take organs from dead people in order to save the lives of people who need organ transplants.
Benefit: someone who was going to die gets to live
Problem: the surviving family members of the dead guy don't get to decide what happens to the liver in dead uncle Frank's corpse.
It seems to me that the benefits far, far outweigh the problems.
why not? :shrug: My husband has told me he is NOT an organ donor, but unless he puts it in his will (which won't be read til a few days after his death, OOPS!) I get to decide what to do with his organs. A family doesn't HAVE to respect the wishes of the deceased.
My family could have a lavish funeral for me and bury me. They don't have to donate all of me as I wish.
Allowing the state to undermine the authority of self, family, culture, and religion is much more important than the well-being of a stranger. When an individual dies, his or her body becomes the responsibility of the greater family. The greater family's responsibilities include easing the pain for the immediate family, providing them sustenance, and burying the deceased individual according to his or her religious and cultural mores. These responsibilities and burdens fall upon the greater family because of blood ties. The state, however, has no familial ties to the deceased, and does nothing to show its loyalty to the individual or his or her family. As such, allowing the state to supersede the individual's and the family's wishes on the basis of potentially helping other non-related families is a bizarre proposition which holds little weight in practice.
Individual family units have more than enough healthy members to ensure there are no shortages of organs for sick family members. If a sick person's own family cannot provide an organ, there is no burden on non-related peoples to fill the void. At least, not out of compulsion, which is the underlying theme for this topic: voluntary versus involuntary donation.
Stop trying to pretend that we're talking about enslaving you and forcing you to build pyramids or be a prostitute or something. Talking about "allowing the state to undermine the authority of self" is such vague language that it's practically meaningless. The specific issue at hand is whether the harm done to a dead person's surviving family by depriving them of the "right" to decide what happens to a relative's corpse trumps the benefit of saving someone's life by giving them an organ. Since harvesting organs from a corpse does no perceivable harm to the surviving family, it seems obvious that the benefits outweigh the costs.
But I'm guessing you're one of those "all taxation is theft!!!!" nutjobs who wants to live in a libertarian pseudo-anarchy and thinks that your rights are being grievously violated every time your property taxes go toward paying for some government service that you don't directly benefit from.
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so you will donate, but only if you get to say who gets them? Do you have an enemy list in case you die in a car crash and your family can decide who gets them?
Do you really want rapists, terrorists, murderers and people like G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld.....etc to live from your organs so they can carry on their tyranny and their craziness ?!!.
If you had a family member who desperately needed an organ and the only one you could get belonged to someone in the categories you abhor, would you reject the organ and let your family member die?
Seriously and according to my knowledge you are NOT allowed to write such a list .