Then that means you will not donate all all in the slim slim change President Bush would get your kidney. :shrug:
Do we own our organs?
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Then that means you will not donate all all in the slim slim change President Bush would get your kidney. :shrug:
You can have my organs AFTER I am through using them.
I think your organs are public domain unless you have specifically willed the rights to them to somebody. If it's not listed in your will, then your body should rightfully be considered to be open game. That's my view on it. If my father were to will his body, including his bodily organs, to me, though, then I would be perfectly within my rights to withhold them from others, and have him buried intact. They would belong to ME, then. They would be my private property. 150,000 USD for the heart? Why, thank you!
They are PRIVATE and not PUBLIC . They are YOU .
Actually, in most states the expressed consent of the deceased to be an organ donor overides the wishes of the family
And if they have a religious objection?
They can opt to have it used to buy a ton of plastic. At least the organs will feed some bacteria and perhaps some worms with strong stomachs.
The money analogy is a good one. If everyone who died had to give their material possessions to the poor we certainly would put a dent in the latter.
The objection that the money would 'not be destroyed' does not hold. The organs would not be destroyed. They would be used by nature. We are making a judgment that they should be used differently. One could make the same arguments for property and money.
Currently a parent can leave all their money to a child who will buy a jet plane and burn the money up on fuel flying around the world looking cool for his friends. If that ain't destroying the money, I don't know what is.
Not all their money! There is a substantial inheritence tax.
They are probably either going to be incinerated and turned into carbon dioxide, or pumped full of embalming fluid, sealed in a box, and buried. Either way, they will be of no perceivable use to "nature".
It is certainly not "destroyed" just because it is no longer in the possession of the original heir. The money remains in the economy and will continue to benefit the people who own the airplane factory, the guy who works at the airport, etc. who will in turn spend it on other things. It continues to exist.
Even if everyone was required to donate their organs there would still be a huge deficit in the number of needed organs.
There’s a lot more to organ donations and usage than I see mentioned here. Most organs have to be gathered within hours after death or they are not good, and not all organs are usable. I have seen organ donors who have donated their hearts or kidneys or whatever only to have died in an accident that caused damage to these organs and prevented their organs from being used, or the guy who wanted to donate his heart dying of a massive coronary.
Some “healthy” people have organs that they don’t realize are not very healthy, and during the autopsy their organs turn up unusable, then there are people on the donor list who later developed other infections or virus that also prevent their organs from being used.
If you do find a good organ then you also have to find a match, same blood type and same age in some cases. Then you have to be sure the transplant person is within a specified travel time and surgery time to benefit for the organ as they have very limited post mortem ability to reuse organs as tissues begin to immediately die.
If you require organs to be donated then you have to do away with the term “Donated” and used “mandated”. Then next to come will be dead people having their heads shaved as their hair can be used for wigs for people who have cancer, and the list goes on. Today the list of body parts that can be reused is rather long.
I personally believe organs are part of a person and nobody else has a right to use them even after the person’s death unless they have agreed to be an organ donor.
Trivia question, what is the human body’s largest organ?
There’s a lot more to organ donations and usage than I see mentioned here. Most organs have to be gathered within hours after death or they are not good, and not all organs are usable. I have seen organ donors who have donated their hearts or kidneys or whatever only to have died in an accident that caused damage to these organs and prevented their organs from being used, or the guy who wanted to donate his heart dying of a massive coronary.
Some “healthy” people have organs that they don’t realize are not very healthy, and during the autopsy their organs turn up unusable, then there are people on the donor list who later developed other infections or virus that also prevent their organs from being used.
If you do find a good organ then you also have to find a match, same blood type and same age in some cases. Then you have to be sure the transplant person is within a specified travel time and surgery time to benefit for the organ as they have very limited post mortem ability to reuse organs as tissues begin to immediately die.
If you require organs to be donated then you have to do away with the term “Donated” and used “mandated”. Then next to come will be dead people having their heads shaved as their hair can be used for wigs for people who have cancer, and the list goes on. Today the list of body parts that can be reused is rather long.
I personally believe organs are part of a person and nobody else has a right to use them even after the person’s death unless they have agreed to be an organ donor.
Trivia question, what is the human body’s largest organ?
CO2 is food for trees. And nature will manage to eat that disgusting pickled monstrosity they make out of bodies. It will just take much longer than it should.
And even if you were right, than you are simply pointing out the problems of our burial practices.
I suspect, however, that SAM is really thinking of Palestinian bodies and the Israeli army and has her tongue way in her cheek on this one. In Palestine the bodies would in fact return to nature.
No they destroy it also. Do you look at GNP to see how well a country is doing?
He could for example invest the money in a company making mines or cluster bombs.
Not substantial enough. Though the % might parallel organ donations.
Last edited:
Mike, when you are dead, your consciousness is no longer present in the universe. It's gone. A dead person is incapable of owning or justifying ownership over anything. That person no longer exists except for a memory.
Last edited:
Because it is faulty to base our determination of morality strictly upon the continuation of life. Self-determination is also an issue of importance. The absence of physical or psychological discomfort is another one, but some would argue that self-determination can anull this. Most important of all, in my opinion, is the good health and education of children.
Self-determination is incapable of applying to a corpse, though. A corpse is incapable of lamenting its fate or protesting what is done with it. Your will is only important while you are still living. Although people should obviously have the right to ask for their organs to remain unharvested after their deaths, since the right to self-determination is contingent upon the natural human desire to accomplish a result through one's intentions, other people's right to live trumps any speculated desires if that person has clearly made no indication, throughout his or her lifetime, of being concerned with the fate of his or her organs. After that person's death, his or her will is absolutely moot if no will were expressed during life. Although your dead body is incapable of caring much about anything, you are capable of complaining quite loudly about its fate before you have expired. Obviously, you have absolute domain over your organs while you remain living, and what you propose is done with it then absolutely does matter.
As a result, I suggest making out your will, or at least express your wishes to some trustworthy relative.
'Do no harm is a rule we came up with'. We can come up with another one. And physicians do harm all the time. Look at the three major treatments for cancer. We could appoint another set of medical people to do the removals. Our wars are often based on ends justify the means and every large scale war has had massive known in advance civilian deaths, including children. Society obviously thinks it can say one shall die so two can live. Why not with organ donation?
It depends on your system of morality. If you follow a strict "do whatever maximizes benefit for the greatest many" system, then perhaps it would be moral. But the vast majority of people don't use such a moral system.