Yes. When someone legislates their morality when there is no harm being done to one human from another, then I don't like it. I might agree with the ends that the kooks' legislation would lead to, but how they get there is wrong, not to mention their reasons for getting there. I agree that the ends of the opt-out plan are good. The more donors, the better. I just don't like their means. Seriously? Someone assuming possession of your organs after you die is much different than you having to grant them that permission first. I'm not gonna go so far as to say it violates human rights, but it's certainly closer to that line.
What's consensual about it? I don't fucking know. You want me to detail the history of this shit? You can dissect this til the cows come home. China put a moratorium on it. Considering how little they give a shit about human rights, it must be pretty bad.
You're dead. Were you planning on using those organs? Again, this is an "opt-out available" proposal. If you don't want them harvesting your organs, you just have to sign a line or check a box, and your organs will rot with the rest of your body. All this does is change the default from leaving a pretty(ish) corpse to parting your corpse out to save the lives of others. Scotchcrotch: China has some cultural issue surrounding dead people's bodies, "mutilation", a dead person's tissue being in another person, and stuff like that. That's why most tissue sources are supposedly from prisoners. That is a different culture than ours (for most North Americans/Europeans), it has different issues than ours.
The way I see it, this is a simple matter of ownership. Do you own your body, or does society? When you buy a house or a car, it's yours. It's not available for everyone to use, and you don't have to specifically say that it isn't communal property. Why should your body be any different? Yes, your body is useless to you once you're dead. Yes, you should be a donor, unless you have some strong moral objection to it. However, changing the system to opt-out means that your body belongs to everyone unless you call dibs on it first. The way to encourage donation is not to take away the rights of everyone. The way is to provide an incentive that people care about: money. If I was offered, say, $100 in tax credits for every year I was an organ donor, you can bet your ass that I would go out of my way to sign up for donation, even if the system wasn't as easy as the current one.
I would truely donate my organs if I could decide which ones I would want to give. All I want is my eyes when I die, they can have everything else
Did you purchase your body? As extrapolated from the concepts of the draft and taxation, as a citizen you are communal property, with several rights reserved to you. The government does own you, although you are able to opt out of being owned (leave the country, renounce citizenship). They're much nicer about their ownership and more keen on you having some freedoms than a slave-driver, though. Again, what rights? Once you're dead, you're dead. Ideally your wishes will be respected, but you won't be there to argue for them. That tax credit idea sounds like a good plan. You're not directly giving money, and giving a nudge to people to go in the direction of communal benefit. I still think an "opt-out" system is best. Ghettoastronaut: So, the numbers you quoted were how many people chose to be organ donors in their respective countries, or, in the first set, how many people opted out and, in the second, how many opted in? Jordan_paul, you can. It's not a legal form in my state, but if you make your wishes known to your family they can request that on your behalf.
I'm not going to argue one way or the other with anyone, because ultimately, it is your own personal decision to donate your organs or not. I'm an organ donor for two main reasons. 1) My brother was in a bad motorcycle accident 13 years ago and basically imploded his C5 vertebrae. It's because someone was an organ (tissue etc.) donor that my brother was able to make the recovery that he did. 2) A friend of mine died in a car accident our senior year of high school. Two girls from another area high school had just been killed about two weeks before and she expressed her wishes to be an organ donor shortly before her own accident. Her organs saved (at least) *8 people and her mom is a huge advocate of organ donation in North Carolina now. Morgan's story is here. Her mom also wrote a book but I can't bring myself to read it. *The amazon.com description says 13 lives & not 8.
True. The cult (not religion) known to us as the Mormons convert anyone they can to Mormonism after they die, and they don't give a shit about consent. If these psychos are allowed to turn people over the the goofiest, most hateful form of Christianity, who's to stop who from what?
The numbers are... <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_donation</a> The first set refers to the rate of organ donation in countries where people have to specifically declare that they do not want their organs donated, i.e., consent is presumed unless indicated otherwise. The second set is the rate of organ donation in countries where dissent is presumed and consent must be declared. I know for a fact that since you live in Ontario, you can do this. Go down to your local service ontario kiosk to get an updated health card, and in the process, just ask for the organ donor forms. You can actually pick and choose which organs you want to donate (or not donate), and you can declare if you only want your organs used for scientific research, or only transplants, or both. It's pretty obvious that we do have rights after we die. What else do wills and estates exist for? I can declare where my money and possessions will go, and if my will is violated, a court can step in and set things straight. I mean, yes, ideally someone will file a complaint that the will is not being executed properly and the court will step in, but a lot of things in the legal system depends on what might ideally happen; a murder victim's body will ideally be found, and the cops will ideally read you your rights when you're arrested and so forth. Doesn't undermine the basic principle.
Even though I didn't purchase my body, it's still mine. I don't like to think of myself as communal property, with a few meager liberties given to me, and neither does the Constitution.
I think there's some confusion between presumed consent and legislated organ donation. Fundamentally, I don't think anyone sensible would suggest seriously, that organ donation be required by law. The question of opt out or opt in participation in organ donation I think is much less emotive. And fundamentally, if you have any concerns about the disposal of your remains - I'd assume you'd take steps to ensure that you opt out of any such scheme. I mean it's your body - if you're concerned enough about the process that you're unwilling to save someone's life or sight with a hunk of meat that will otherwise rot, I'm pretty sure you'd be willing to get your drivers license renewed and tick the box that says 'not a donor'. If you're from a religious background or whatever that finds flaw with organ donation or whatever - that's more then understandable. But it seems like it's not overly unreasonable that you might need to tick a box on a form one time in your life if you've made a decision not to donate your organs and maybe un-tick that box if you change your mind later. Personally, I think the whole debate is kind of ludicrous given our restrictions on cloning. Who gives a shit about dead people's organs when the only thing preventing us from growing a supply to meet demand is knee jerk legislation driven by the superstitious phobias of a vocal minority who believe that an invisible man in the sky watches them while they poop?
That is the best point on this board so far. Religion has held us back and prevented us from achieving so much more. Organ cloning, stem cell research, gay marriage, etc. All should be basic rights to life, all of them illegal in many places because people that think science is a sham and it is a "sin" (no such word) because an unidentifiable drop of subatomic goo is life (despite the fact they have NO IDEA what stem cells are) and because that infamous authorless "good book" says that the only thing a man can put in another man is a bullet (or blade, if you want to go with whenever it was written). We could be curing Parkinsons and have people getting on with their lives, but instead people keep dying in horrible pain and the fags keep on demanding their right to wreck the holy sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. Bill Maher said it best: "Religion must die so mankind can live."
I get the argument about wanting to grant the government possession of your body rather than have them assume that right, and the idea that checking a box to opt out is a slippery slope to then having to fill out a form or other hoops to jump through so that your preferences are adhered to. I can understand the uneasiness. I just don't agree with it. What if I am a person who believes that the only way to get to heaven is to be cremated. But I have no next of kin and I live in a country where if no one takes possession of my body, I will be put in a pine box and buried. Wouldn't I have to jump through some hoops to get my desires met? The point being that if I am the type of person where I actually give a shit what happens to my body after I die, I am inevitably going to have to deal with paperwork. It is unrealistic to think that anyone who is going to be high maintenance over their corpse is going to have to do ZERO paperwork. And that's the way it should be. If you don't care what happens to your body, then the option to be practical and efficient is there. If you do care what happens to your body, then jump through the necessary hoops to make it happen. Opting out of organ donation would just be one of those hoops.
Wow. Just wow. I'm hoping that you're a citizen of China, or North Korea, because what you stated above is so antithetical to the system of government as set up in the United States there's no way you've had a civics class on American government. Since I will assume that you are not a citizen of the United States, I'll explain a bit. The government of the United States' power is derived from the people. This is different from China or North Korea, where you obviously live (although I'm not ruling out that you have a time machine and are currently living in Mussolini's Fascist Italy circa 1938, in which case, go buy all the oil stock you can get your hands on, put it in a safety deposit box, and will the key to me, since you'll be dead by the time I'm born and you won't be needing the money). Again, since you're new to American Government, I'll throw this out in layman's terms: it's called 'due process' and you can't be deprived of freedom (uh, your body...in case you were wondering) or property without due process of law (the shorthand is notice and a hearing). Now why does the US have such a draconian requirement before the government that owns us deprives us of life, liberty or property? Well, the simple answer is because they don't own you. When I decide what to do with something I own, whether it be my guitars or pets, I don't have to give them notice and a hearing. Why? Because I own them. I can do as I please with them (to a degree). All of them. The Constitution is a grant of limited powers from the people (via the states) to the Federal Government. If the power was not granted specifically (or through interpretation of certain clauses - which is a touchy subject, so I'll avoid it for now) then it's reserved to the States, or the people. Meaning, the default is that you have rights (See Amendment X), and unless they are specifically taken away through due process - like for instance, income tax (see Amendment XVI to the Constitution wherein the States granted that right to the Federal Government). Ideally? Uh, I'm not aware of the provision in the Constitution that says my body isn't my own. In fact, I'm aware of interpretations very much to the contrary, like the fundamental right to reproduce and for women, abort, because, well, it's not the government's body, now is it? You know what's an even better idea? The opt-in system we have now with better publicity. The government may not like some of my personal choices, but I don't know where they get off legislating such choices. Actually, I do. Citizens of the US, with your mindset, that somehow believe in a paternalistic form of government wherein they step in (like a parent) to inform me that my decisions are not, well, what they would choose. So to make sure I get back on the straight and narrow they'll just go ahead and choose for me. I'm sorry you live in a society like China or North Korea (with the potential for the time machine scenario exempted, see above). But here in America, well, some of us remember that it's supposed to be government by the people, for the people. Sadly, many have forgotten that we're set up that way and just head happily down the path of legislated morality like a bunch of lambs to the slaughter because too few of us actually want to make a stand and say 'hey, wait a minute, just because you don't like my choice doesn't mean I'm not entitled to it.' As much as I hate hippies, I will say this for them: they got the idea that we're the government, and change comes from us, not the government. Unfortunately, it will be the death of me when I see the transformation of our government to Big Brother. But know this, I promise when it happens and the citizenry wakes up and says 'holy fuck, how the hell did that happen?' I won't say 'I told you so.' Well, mostly because I probably won't have that right anymore.
I'm not religious at all, but do you really have no problems creating human beings solely for the purpose of harvesting their organs? Forget metaphysics and all that other crap, a clone is another fully sentient and autonomous human being. The idea that we should create an army of clones and harvest their organs is identical to saying we should breed an army of children and harvest their organs. Now, using stem cells to grow an organ is a whole other subject.
Please. Clones should be used for the sole purpose of fighting our wars. If we can get organs for donation out of them, well, that's just a bonus. In all seriousness I don't think a full-blown, sentient clone would need to be, uh, grown. You could clone a heart, or a lung, or whatever. In this circumstance, I'm unclear about where the line is between growing stem cells and generating a clone.
Why would it spawn more? Because everything any government has ever done has spawned more bureaucracy. There has never been anything they've done that hasn't spawned bureaucracy. Ever. Ever, ever, ever.
So, repealing prohibition created more bureaucracy? There were more police officers enforcing the legality of alcohol than there were police officers enforcing its illegality? Remember what I said: under the current system, next of kin are who actually decide on whether someone's organ is donated or not. This has resulted in organ donation wishes having to be recorded in several places and the need to talk to family members and yet there's still more paperwork for the NOK to sign, and hospitals have to hire special teams to deal with these people, and so forth. That sounds like a hell of a lot of bureaucracy to me, even though they're not government employees.
In a question of curiosity, if we were to create clone organs of ourselves, wouldn't the same genetic issues and weaknesses be transferred over to the clone organs, thus making those organs susceptible to the same diseases and issues? In these cases, would it be a situation of having several, compatible to your body/genetics/you, organs that you could get?
But the advantage is that there would be a zero chance of organ rejection, and no need for immune suppressant agents. A lot of organ donation issues occur because of the environment - poisoning, accidents, shit we don't understand yet, so forth. Genetics doesn't determine everything; identical twins, for example, don't always have the same diseases.