I'm a cancer survivor, so I figure I cannot donate my organs, since I cannot donate blood. It's kinda disappointing to have to tell that to the MVA people every five years.

I'd love to be able to, however. I support the right to refuse, also.

Here's an idea: how about allowing people to sell their organs. There will be the financial incentive of the donors or their heirs getting a pot of money.

Amy, you got it backwards. See the passages on presumed consent in Superfreakonics by Levitt & Dubner, which is a pretty good beach read anyway.

People have the right to be shallow and small-minded, but not by default... Not when modern medicine, and a grownup approach to it, brings so many blessings to our lives.

You wanna live in modernity? Be modern.

They wouldn't take my organs, for the same reason they wouldn't accept my blood.

"Here's an idea: how about allowing people to sell their organs. There will be the financial incentive of the donors or their heirs getting a pot of money."

How about I come take yours early, then, because I can make money?

I wish I could sell my organs and get a Shelby Mustang. But then I would be dead. So I'm stuck getting a Camaro.

I'm with Criddo. Glad to have you back!

People have a right not to donate their organs and should not be make to feel guilty if they don't want to donate their organs.
We are humans and should not be slave to any third world organ trade.
Our organs are not for sale!

What's the big deal? I'm an organ donor. Anyone who wants 'em can have 'em when I'm done with 'em. As in, when I'm dead. Because when I'm dead, you know, I won't need 'em!

This puts me in the weird position of arguing against myself - personally, I don't care if you want to roast me and stuff an apple in my mouth after I'm dead. Because, I'm dead! And I won't care.

But I find the quote from Dr. Harris really creepy: "It is ethical because the default should be to save lives." That's just...problematic on so many levels. Saving a life is certainly a noble goal, but I fail to see how that flipped around makes whatever you're doing on the other side of the equation ethical. That's a very flimsy argument.

Anyone read The Red Market? It's a quick read but a very eye-opening look at how the organ market works, especially in India and China, but it also makes some very important points about why the organ donation system in the United States functions so poorly.

Can't agree with you. I am all for presumed consent. If someone can't be bothered to fill out the opt-out form, they didn't really care what happened to their organs. Nor should their relatives have standing. It isn't their body.

I also can't agree with selling organs after death. But I do think a living donor should be able to sell that spare kidney or liver lobe if they want to. That still leaves dead donors for those who can't pay millions.

Dh and I both want to be pulled apart for spare parts, then cremated and sprinkled. My parents find that abhorrent. Should they get to negate my wishes after death? (I am aware they currently can't as the decision goes to the spouse). Lots of people have wishes their parents/family neither know about or agree with.

I didn't used to have any objection to selling organs. I mean, it makes sense. I have two kidneys. I only need one to survive, and I have an emergency expense that I could cover by selling my spare kidney for $20,000.

The thing is, once you make it a marketable asset, your kidney becomes that. And when you go bankrupt, your creditors get to seize all of your assets. Do you really want them to be able to list that kidney as an asset they can come and take?

Scarey business.

"Some people are old or not that informed or together."

That's the exact same argument being used to bail out people who got crappy mortgage terms. It's often a leftist argument (and I know you're not leftist)-"other people aren't smart enough to make a decision like I am, so we need to not allow them to".

Two fly balls in one game?

I was at Yankee Stadium the day that utility infielder Phil Linz hit 2 HRs (from baseball-reference.com: 14 June 1964, vs. White Sox). They were the 5th and 6th of his career (1962-68, in which he totaled 11 HRs). Both went into the first row, just inside the LF foul pole, caught by the same fan. I know this, because I was in the lobby area outside the locker room waiting for my ride hame from a stadium employee when the fan came in with both baseballs. He was immediately ushered in to the locker room to meet Linz.

As for organ donations, Amy is dead on.

After I'm dead, I don't see why my organs are of any use to me. However, I fully intend on using mine until they are no longer functional. I also feel like if it would dramatically upset my family for them to take my organs, than their grieving wishes are my concern. I'm not too concerned with what happens to my body, other than in case of zombie apocalypse, no cremation.

However, wanting more organs from non-consenting donors is just an excuse not to be able to provide the lab-grown organs they promised. That was part of the purpose of stem cell research, right?

If someone can't be bothered to fill out the opt-out form

You know, that's the same thing the spammers told me about junk email. Hint: I'll give you the same answer as I gave them, just more politely. No.

I'm for the implied consent thing, but see some problems with it. Mainly this: I think I'm an organ donor, but I'm not real sure. I'm pretty sure that I've filled something or other out at the DMV, but nothing on my driver's license for my state makes it clear. I move around a lot and each state is different.

My loved ones know that I want to donate whatever is left -- I think. It's been a long time since the topic has come up. During stressful times, there might be confusion. Yes, I know ... I'm a dirtbag for not having an up to date will, but I don't think I'm alone.

Maybe you see my point. A nut who doesn't want to donate their organs probably has the same real life imperfections.

At any rate, I've been putting a lot of city miles on my organs. They'd probably do some poor soul more harm than good. Maybe they'll come in handy as a scientific freak show or at least a cautionary tale for wayward youths.

"It is ethical because the default should be to save lives. It is better for relatives because there is many an occasion where relatives regret saying no out of grief. But I have never heard of relatives regretting saving a life."

This is not the NHS position on other matters, where euthanasia and eugenics are practiced. So the doctor's 'default' position is rather ad hoc. His second point is a fabrication intended to remove oversight.

Dr Evan Harris added: "It is ethical because the default should be to save lives. It is better for relatives because there is many an occasion where relatives regret saying no out of grief. But I have never heard of relatives regretting saving a life."

Suppose you are critically injured and have only a 5% chance of recovery, or even a 2% chance. You may hang on for a week or two. There is someone who needs a heart transplant within the next 48 hours. If Dr. Harris was looking after you, do you think it's possible that he might tell your family that you have no chance to recover in order to save the other person? After all, the default should be to save lives.

Slippery slope.

"In bankruptcy, aren't there laws that they can't take your home or clothes or car? I don't foresee people being forced into surgery."

Yes. You can keep one car and one house and some other stuff. They don't want you to be able to shrug and say "oops, guess I don't have any way of paying what I owe" and getting to keep all your cool stuff, but they don't want you in the streets and on the dole either.

Funerary practices are ghoulish enough without adding default organ removal. Personally, I want them to take everything still useable from my body and then send the rest to as body farm for research and education. (Since the whole point of a body farm is to study how cadavers decompose it's one way to get out of the whole embalming thing - which completely squicks me out even though I'll be dead.)

I think it is unacceptable to imply that people are willing to be organ donors just because they did not get to fill in any opt out form.
The question is how many people are informed or given the opportunity to fill in an opt out form?
It should be the other way round whereby strict intructions/consent signed by willing donor and by reliable witness should only be accepted. Presumed consent or presumed opt out is not only unreliable, ridiculous and unacceptable but also unethical.

> Some people are old or not that
> informed or together.

If they're old, who cares? Their organs are probably good fer nuthin' anyway.

If they're not "that informed", why the fuck not? Modern life has many responsibilities which attend its phenomenal blessings. If you want to drive, you gotta get a license, and you're presumed to know what's on every page of the drivers manual (and give presumed consent to alcohol tests); if you want access to our miraculous health care, you can fucking well do your homework... Especially to escape a fee which can never be collected when you're alive.

If they're not "together", perhaps they don't deserve access to the best medical care anyway. In blood donations and plenty of other contexts, we've got a huge sector of freeriders. ("Oooooh, I just don't like needles! They're sharp and bleedy!) When this world turns to shit, they will certainly presume that the rest of the modern world will come to their aid with the best that science and the human heart have to offer.

Amy, you spend so much of your time trying to present yourself as a Thoroughly Modern Millie, all thoughtful and science-y and crisply, curtly, almost primly responsible. I can't understand why you're backsliding on this one.

People don't have the right to be wrong... Not if they're going to demand a slice of our miraculous modern medicine, a wonder built from blood and treasure.

Fuck 'em.

[Howzabout you guyz buy me a Ferrari now, and I'll pay you back when I'm dead. OK? Great.]

Regarding your fussy rectitude, I'm pretty sure I know how you'd come down on this one.

I'll get ya the key ring, Cridmiester. That's about all I can afford.

Suddenly I'm hungry for liver and onions.

How can someone who doesn't exist anymore have rights? They are dead!

I've never heard of anyone catching two fly balls in one game.

Outfielders do it all the time.

=========================

...and I'll pay you back when I'm dead.

Your kidney worth that much, huh?

=========================

In blood donations and plenty of other contexts, we've got a huge sector of freeriders. ("Oooooh, I just don't like needles! They're sharp and bleedy!) When this world turns to shit, they ... presume that the rest of the modern world will come to their aid with the best that science and the human heart have to offer.

People presume that the institutions upon which they rely have always been there and don't realize how fragile they really are.

"Modern" medicine is actually less than 100 years old.

Before the discovery of blood types in 1901, transfusions were risky and more often than not resulted in the death of the recipient.

The first successful internal organ transplant was performed in 1954 (57 years ago - less than one lifetime).

Good healthcare is not a right. It's a direct benefit of civilization.

And it's up to all of us to keep it. Health insurance and blood donations are ways we support the system before we need it.

Melissa Says:

"How can someone who doesn't exist anymore have rights? They are dead!"

If a person has the right to determine what happens to their possessions and assets after they die, then they certainly have the right to determine what happens to their body after they die.

It seems rather odd to me that you would suggest that a dead person doesn't have the right to determine if they want their organs to go to other people or to decompose in the earth but they can determine who ends up with their house.

Why don’t we mandate that the homes of the deceased be donated to the homeless for example?

It isn’t functionally different than mandating that the organs of the deceased be donated to those who need organs.

The body is not some lesser form of property than anything else we accumulate in life. In fact, our body is the most important possession we had. So it stands to reason that we should have the greatest discretion in determining what happens to it after we are done using it.

"Dr Evan Harris added: "It is ethical because the default should be to save lives. It is better for relatives because there is many an occasion where relatives regret saying no out of grief. But I have never heard of relatives regretting saving a life.""

If the problem is people aren't informed, I'm okay with campaigns that inform people. Can someone demonstrate though that people aren't informed, and it's not a case of their opting out already?

I'm not fond of any programs that are default opt-in.

It's funny how when spammers create default opt-in programs, we all get very upset. But when we want to force others to do as we want them to do, then we start demanding default opt-in programs.

"Regarding your fussy rectitude, I'm pretty sure I know how you'd come down on this one"

I had a disease that the CDC links to vaccines and as such, the CDC tells me and doctors not to vaccinate me.

And so ... I absolute rely on herd immunity.

And still, BECAUSE I had a disease that the CDC links to vaccines, I will not demand that the government use force (and courtroom threats, and custody threats, or refuse schooling) to get that vaccine into you.

I believe in education and after speaking with my kids' doctors, and consulting with my ex, we had our kids vaccinated with I think all but two of their childhood vaccines.

And I am all for outreach campaigns, and education campaigns, and low cost health care options,

But what I am against is government on our bodies (in our bedrooms.)

Keep the government off our bodies (and out of our bedrooms.)

"Suddenly I'm hungry for liver and onions."

Gog, you are a sick, twisted puppy - and I love you for it.

So, are people too poorly informed to accept vaccines? It's the default, you have to fill forms out to opt out (okay, you have to fill forms out to opt your kids out, if you want them in school, daycare, sports, or ay other organized activity). So how on earth is this different? You go in for a drivers liscense, or ID, or whatever, and they ask "do you want to opt out" just like they currently ask if you want to register to vote. What is the big deal? Could even be available on a website, like registering to vote is. Easy peasy, I assure you even those underinformed idiots you all are so worried about can figure it out.

> Your kidney worth that much, huh?

Well, Dood, I've been planning ahead! I've put all the junk food and drinking and drugs and unprotected sex and bendy scuba dives through one of my kidneys, and left the other one perfectly clean for the next guy!

But don't give it to a retarded child, OK? Also, no women, gays, blacks, Lutherans, or Celtics fans. Or Mac users.

Even in death, I got standards.

And...

> Good healthcare is not a right. It's a
> direct benefit of civilization.

Exactly. I think this is the best possible argument against the people who complain about evolution being taught in schools.

It's not an argument I worry about a whole lot... I don't think a single chapter mentioning Darwin in sixth grade it really going to help that many people live lives of great clarity.

But there's zero, zero doubt in my mind that the people who have alternate, Godly schemes for the rise of humanity will, when they get sick, go straight to the most modern hospital they can find. And when they get there, the doctors who treat them will employ insights about living tissue that wouldn't exist without a clear understanding of evolution. And if the doctors misread their textbooks and something goes wrong, the believers will sue. They don't have the courage of their convictions.

> they certainly have the right to determine
> what happens to their body after they die.

Let them come back to life and defend those interests.

> In fact, our body is the most important
> possession we had. So it stands to reason
> that we should have the greatest discretion
> in determining what happens to it

This is among the worst arguments ever posted here. (And try to appreciate the ferocity of your competition.)

See also, Big Megan.

Truth is, there are a number of repugnant comments in here. But I gotta gota work.

The problem with not donating your organs is that you're dead. You don't have an ultimate say over what happens to your body or have the ability to have extra special care over your body. You cannot be offended, demeaned, or disobeyed. To make an argument against someone who is no longer in existence's wishes, is just silly. It becomes property of the family and, within the law, are able to do with it whatever they please, unless you leave instructions and means to have things done otherwise. For those people who didn't take time to fill out the opt-out form, will unlikely have then made all of the arrangements after their death. Why are we concerned about what people want after death? They probably didn't want their family going through their stuff or fighting over assets either, but they regularly do that...

What this debate really comes down to is, who owns your body after you die? A default policy of organ donation says, in effect, that unless you explicitly bequeath otherwise, the government does.

Extreme libertarian though I am, I'm OK with that, so long as the right to make that explicit bequest is scrupulously protected.

As far as I'm concerned, our society is already waaaaay too full of "implied consent" and it all needs to be gotten rid of. When I buy software, I give implied consent to a license whose terms I am not allowed to find out until I have committed to the transaction. When I drive my car on the highway, I give implied consent to be stopped and searched at random. When I buy an airline ticket, I give implied consent to a short-arm inspection. Enough's enough.

And while we're at it...

Alice Roth "caught" two foul balls in one game. She was attending a Phillies game in 1957 when Phillies slugger Richie Ashburn hit a foul ball that hit her in the face and broke her nose. As she was being carried off, Ashburn continued with his at-bat and hit another foul ball... which nailed Roth as she laid on a stretcher.

Also... "I've had a great life as Amy Alkon and I do not wish to live as the human-featured turnip..." With all due respect, Amy, in your case I think that would be more like a carrot.

> our society is already waaaaay too full
> of "implied consent"

Or is it too full of egalitarian access to medical miracles?

If you want to take care of your ass in all respects, before death and after, then okey-fine... Leave us out of it, we'll leave you out of it.

Y'know, the thing is, this isn't a big ask for someone who wants to live with the conveniences of modern life. NO ONE IS GOING TO BE FORCED TO HAVE THEIR EYES CUT OUT OR ANYTHING. If you want to be a primitive, small-minded little prick, go ahead.

But implied consent forces you to say it out loud: I'm going to live like a small-minded, primitive little prick from the middle ages.

The shame of having to say that will be enough for some people to behave better. Hell, the mechanics of having to say that will cause some people to behave better.

I can't understand why blog people who prattle so often about mutual responsibilities and "evidence-based reasoning" could be against implied consent for organ donation.

I was thinking of ending this with something like "Give me modernity or give me death"... But I'm middle-aged now. We're it not for the cleanliness, care and nutrition of modernity, I probably would be dead. As Reagan used to say, "You gotta dance with the one who brung ya."

That's were it not, not we're it not.

Typing at work here, mind on other things....

Two words: Burke, and Hare.

I too have opted in. I doubt much of me could be used at this stage of my life or health, and current state of medical expertise, but if something can, fine. Well, excepting that whatever is left I want burned - why provide even a temporary feast for whatever little critters probably did me in, or would have if not for that patch of ice I slipped on...

But a form to opt out? Look, if they cannot find my opt-in form, no biggie for me. But for a number of people, and/or their families, there are religious implications if an opt-out is not found. I suppose we could tattoo the form under the armpit, as the SS used to do with service ID numbers so it was likely to be readable even under extreme circumstances.

For the squeamish, perhaps once every few years a public service announcement reminding them that a donated liver may well live on as opposed to what happens to it in the grave, slowly eaten by bacteria and bugs and turned to mush until finally gone into other digestive systems...

I like medical implied consent. I like it a lot. That way if I am in a car accident or something, the paramedics can try to help me and transport me. Even if I am unconscious. Even if I don't have my hubby around. Even if don't have a little card in my wallet that gives permission. I can continue to get treatment at a hospital regardless of my ability to give approval. If my son is injured, he gets the benefit of implied consent for treatment too.

I'm on the organ donor list. I'm also a regular blood donor (B+, babe)and I also am in the registry for marrow donors. It is the right thing to do.

Go ahead and make donation the default. Opting out when you get your ID renewed is easy enough.

However I think the best way to deal with it is to make it easier or more rewarding for people to donate.

Try giving them cash bonus when they get the little heart doohickey on their IDs at renewal. Or cut taxes on their estates to get the heirs to approve.

Donor bonus!

> for a number of people, and/or their
> families, there are religious implications

1. So the fuck what? If your religious implications are in the way, you can [A] get over yourself or [B] do the Goddam paperwork. Anyone who can read enough scripture to be so terribly principled about it ought to be smart enough to read a simple legal form... Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and all that. (PS- I feel the same way about women who wanna wear burqas in the West without regard to our standards of security and identification: Sorry, lil' sister... Live modern or live elsewhere.)

2. For a number of other people, with/without families of their own, there are live-and-death implications.

> I like medical implied consent. I like it
> a lot. That way if I am in a car accident
> or something, the paramedics can
> try to help me

Exactly. Exact-a-mundo. Exacta-doodle-doo.

All this magical care, including emergency response, isn't the natural order of things. It's synthetic as Hell. It's expensive, and it takes a lot of people working hard to hone unusual reflexes.

We shouldn't let cowardly doorknobs get in the way without thinking about it.

> Live modern or live elsewhere

Wouldn't modern be cryonic preservation, e.g.
http://www.alcor.org/

Maybe it's not, but not sure why you get to define what modern is.

> not sure why you get to define
> what modern is.

Nor am I sure why you'd get to define what "life" is, or what a corpse is worth. "Cryonic preservation" is specifically about the storage of meat, no matter how quickly frozen after death... It isn't "life" that's being preserved.

Thought about it some more on the way home.

There's no reason for you to take offense at my definition of modern, unless you're already sorta touchy about it... My definition isn't remarkable. It includes things like comity for women (and others), cooperation, aggressive capitalism and Modern Medicine.

And MM is all about tissue sharing, which is why I do one or two dozen platelet donations every year... And why you should as well, if you're not into weird sex or illicit drugs.

I think you're being pissy.

Across the world, people are screaming for modernity's blessings, even as they selfishly dream that its responsibilities can be avoided, or that their own primeval vices can be excused. If you DON'T agree with my definition of modernity, you're a man with a problem. And it's not going to get better for you. Religious faith is dwindling in many contexts, if not the ancient self-centeredness to which it has always catered: Broader society is ever less patient with an infantile understanding of the corporeal self.

Which brings us to your other point....

When presumed consent happens, anyone who's set aside a few hundred grand (or much, much more) to have their own corpse frosted is probably not going to be bothered by having to sign one sheet of paper from the state. (There will be plenty of paperwork, I promise. I signed my name 60+ times just to buy a house.)

And by the way, how much ink will you scratch before you'll be convinced that the nice man in the Alcor blazer will refrigerate your balls for the next ten centuries (or whatever)?... As opposed to taking your dry ice money to Vegas for a hot weekend? And are you really, really going to trust that haircut in the suit on the other side of desk? If you're so desperately afraid of death, are you likely to be a really great judge of human character?

Just to enliven a waning comment thread, let's everybody vote:

QUIZ (Check one)

Which is most pathetic?

[_] The kind of ninny who thinks that sinister, conniving vipers are hiding behind every tree and shrub, ready to pounce at the first sign of illness in order to collect the spleen, kidney, or ear wax, because the ninny's own life is so fabulous that contemporaries are envious in all respects

[✔] The kind of fuckwit who thinks his own runaway egotism is an expression of mankind's best; i.e., that his own life is so remarkable that it future generations will be fascinated by it, and glad that the fuckwit spent his own kid's inheritance on dry ice so that it will still be around

"But implied consent forces you to say it out loud: I'm going to live like a small-minded, primitive little prick from the middle ages."

No, what it does is create a backlash. You want to kill organ donation? Pass a law that mandates implied consent, and watch for the lines to form at the courthouse for opt-out forms. Because if we can mandate implied consent for organ donation, we can also, say, make implied DNR mandatory for everyone over 60. Way to get rid of those pesky health care costs!

"Mandates implied consent" is crazyshit wording... That's like "Enforces optional song-singing".

Besides, do you spend your life building the world that's least difficult to construct?

Many who default to idiocy do better when told that more is expected of them. (See also: Grade schools)

—

Compels nonobligatory birdwatching! Demands volitional square dancing!

By the way, dude, are you Category 1, above?

> Nor am I sure why you'd get to define what "life"
> is, or what a corpse is worth. "Cryonic
> preservation" is specifically about the storage
> of meat, no matter how quickly frozen after
> death... It isn't "life" that's being preserved.

I'm definitely not claiming to be able to define this. Please don't put words in my mouth. You just keep claiming people should be all "modern" - cryonics seems quite modern to me.

And cryonics has nothing to do with meat. From the site: "Cryonics is a speculative life support technology that seeks to preserve human life in a state that will be viable and treatable by future medicine."

"Pass a law that mandates implied consent, and watch for the lines to form at the courthouse for opt-out forms."

Except that hasn't happened a single place it's been passed. Not one.

""Mandates implied consent" is crazyshit wording... That's like "Enforces optional song-singing".

Three letters: TSA. If implied consent were optional, I would have to give consent to it. And I haven't done that.

"By the way, dude, are you Category 1, above?"

How's this for an answer: I don't give a fuck about your categories.

Also from the site: "Alcor intervenes in the dying process as soon as possible after legal death."

That's the funnest sentence you'll parse all day. It's kind of like how I began my ceaseless quest for the 2011 NBA Championship moments after the Dallas Mavericks retired from the court with the trophy.

(LeBron didn't do that well, either. Emm-Eee-Aye-Tee meat.)

Cryonics is new, but hucksters have been selling dreamy afterlives to rubes since the dawn of time. Alcor's storage facility looks crisply streamlined and tidy... I mean, it would be a great place to hang out for a few centuries until someone with no legal or emotional attachment to me whatsoever decided to go to the trouble and expense of re-animating me at my most enfeebled old age, long after I'd completed an unremarkable cycle of life and death, and chewed up God knows how many natural resources without even being alive...

IJS, the Vatican is prettier, and their brochure is a handsomely detailed.

> I haven't done that.

Great: Stay home. You don't want to even have to sign a form to resist postmortem organ donation? Fine: Don't bother our medical system with your health needs.

> I don't give a fuck about your categories.

Riiiiiiight. See, that's how this goes, with Obamacare and all the rest. People think that no matter what happens, no matter how little value they contribute to the process, they should have the right to demand a perfectly customized experience of health care (and beyond), one tailored perfectly to their fears and comforts.

Hey now! Denis Dutton is dead, but his website happened to offer this link today.

"Riiiiiiight. See, that's how this goes, with Obamacare and all the rest. People think that no matter what happens, no matter how little value they contribute to the process, they should have the right to demand a perfectly customized experience of health care (and beyond), one tailored perfectly to their fears and comforts."

Very much on the contrary; I demand the health care experience that I can and am willing to pay for. It's Obamacare that will eliminate all the options. Once that goes into effect, as far as health care goes, us ordinary joes are all interchangable parts. One size fits all.

As far as my "debt to society": Anyone who says that they can put any kind of a claim on me simply because I exist can kiss my ugly white ass. Keep in mind that a government that can pass an abomination like Obamacare over the overwhelming opposition of the citizenry can easily redefine the meaning of the word "death".

> a claim on me simply because I exist

No; a claim on you because you your life has been profoundly extended by a medical science that has often demanded the fleshiest, most personal kinds of sacrifices from people. You don't "simply exist".

Pick a disease, any disease, but especially one against which progress has been made: Read about it. There are always stories in the research of people who wanted to live lives (or die deaths) of private misery, but instead allowed doctors, dim ones and bright ones, to poke around in their wounds and dressings and behaviors and relationships until progress was had... So that now you don't have worry about it. You owe those people something; you owe that machinery something.

It's funny, no matter how pissed I get when reading these comments, it's always even more irritating when thinking about them later.

It's ludicrous to compare (voluntary) organ harvesting after death, by some of the brightest people in the world, so that a child might regain eyesight or a parent might live to see a child's graduation, with having your underwear probed while you're very much alive by the TSA, some of the stupidest personalities ever to burden the public payroll, just so their managers can increase their budgets.

Crid Says:

“This is among the worst arguments ever posted here. (And try to appreciate the ferocity of your competition.)”

Well I am certainly glad that the argument was apparently so poor that you didn’t even have to bother with materially addressing it or even so much as offering a single counter point.

Apparently the argument was bad based upon fiat.

Now to anyone who actually understands how to argue a point it would be clear that the method you chose is full of holes and doesn’t accomplish a damn thing.

I would take the time to spell out my argument in great detail such that you could appreciate the validity of my logic, but I fear it would be a waste of time. I suspect arguing with you would be like playing chess against a pigeon, you’ll just shit all over the board, knock over a bunch of the pieces and then fly off declaring victory.

As Christopher Hitches would say, “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”, therefore your contention that my argument was poor can be simply ignored due to a lack of any explanation whatsoever on your part.

No one "owes" the medical establishment anything after their death. Furthermore, if everyone were to owe the medical establishment something after they die, why is it their organs and not their financial assets?

It seems rather strange for ones assets to be left to ones heirs by default, but for ones organs to be left to the state by default.

> you didn’t even have to bother with
> materially addressing it

What's the "material" part? I don't remember. Time to review! Where did I lose interest? Hmmmm... Aha!

Who says "our body is the most important possession"?

It ain't a wristwatch. The body is so vastly different from property –so differently measured by law and morality and medicine and science– that it's just goofy to call it a "possession"... A word which itself has implications regarding sanity, accountability, and supernatural influence. When your next sentence begins with "So it stands to reason that...", it's too late: I've already lost my erection.

Be fun or stay home

Crid,

You have essentially made my point with the following admission:

"Who says "our body is the most important possession"?

It ain't a wristwatch. The body is so vastly different from property –so differently measured by law and morality and medicine and science– that it's just goofy to call it a "possession""

If you don't like the term "possession" and that is all you are criticizing then you are simply playing a stupid game of semantics.

I don't care whether or not you consider your body a more important "possession" than your watch if you freely admit that by all standards of law, morality, medicine, and science that your body deserves stronger protections than your watch.

The moment you or anyone else suggests that when you die your organs belong by default to the next person you needs them is the moment I ask why when you die your watch doesn't go to the closest person without one on their wrist.

We don't go about distributing your assets by default to the nearest individual who lacks those resources when you die. Therefore we should not go about distributing your organs by default (which you agree are FAR more important) to the closest individual who could use them.

Those sort of donations require your express permission prior to death.

As for your lost erection, maybe if you are lucky someone nearby will die and you can claim their penis.

> Those sort of donations require your express
> permission prior to death.

Or not. That's our topic today, isn't it? "Stands to reason" isn't an argument.

Did you go to college?

We don't go about distributing your assets by default to the nearest individual who lacks those resources when you die.

No, we don't, but that's a matter of law and custom. Doing so wouldn't violate any inherent human right, whether the asset in question is a wristwatch or a kidney.

True. Again, Megan.

Besides:

> No one "owes" the medical establishment
> anything after their death.

The debt isn't to "the medical establishment", it's to other people, including ones who aren't fortunate.

Thirty years ago, there was this guy named Barney Clark, and the last six months of his life were really grim... It was all over the newspapers and TV. He was not an "establishment" figure, he was just a nice guy.

A handsome personal aspiration, but that would be lousy policy.

Crid Says:

"Or not. That's our topic today, isn't it? "Stands to reason" isn't an argument."

No it isn't. "Stands to reason" was the opening to my concluding sentence after I presented a logical case.

Your statement here is as stupid as reading the last page of a book and declaring that there was no plot.

Again, you have presented no counter arguments. Just refutation by fiat. Good luck with that tactic.

"The debt isn't to "the medical establishment", it's to other people, including ones who aren't fortunate."

No one owes any organ debt to others after they die, regardless of their fortune.

To argue that the recently dead have an organ debt to the living is to argue that the living have an inherent right to the organs of those around them.

To donate ones organs is a nice gesture, but it is not a social obligation, nor should it be.

Your desire to live does not obligate others to save your life.

I'd also like to point out that in this situation the burden of proof remains upon you to prove your case. This is because your position is the one that requires shifting from an already accepted legal standard, and that the natural default is not for your organs to go to other people, but for your organs to decompose and be consumed by insects.

Since you are the one who wants to alter the natural default, and current legal system, it is your responsibility to present a solid case. You have fails to do so and instead just rant and rave with one fallacious argumentative tactic after another.

"No; a claim on you because you your life has been profoundly extended by a medical science..."

Who says it has? I'm born healthy, I have no significant problems throughout my life, and I die in a car accident at the age of 25. What has medical science done for me? People did exist before there was advanced medicine, you know.

> I presented a logical case.

So no college, correct? (Tippoff: "Rather", the prissy way, twice.)


> I'm born healthy....

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight... This is EXACTLY, concisely the kind of small-mindedness that policy can correct.

No matter how much wealth an environment provides, no matter how rich the culture in terms of options and education and opportunity and safety, human nature is all about takin' care of Number One, Baby! All lives have moments of hurt and disappointment, and in those times, the typical individual will always look at others who're feeling happier in that moment and think "Why MEEEEE? Why is MY life such a plodding, scorching Hell???" ...Even if the problem is just that the local 7/11 has run out of Ranch Style Doritos over the holiday weekend.

This happens especially when the typical individual has typically weak parents who don't teach gratitude, but there are no guarantees anyway. Human nature is the problem. People will by default think of themselves as proud, self-reliant cowboys shooting their way through a desert valley of heartless cunning, unloved and unnoticed, defiantly struggling to survive in a world that doesn't care.

They're small-minded.

They're small-minded, and they hate the sight of blood.

They're small-minded, they hate the sight of blood, and they hate to think about their goopy insides! It's funner to pretend that their good health isn't a product of modern epidemiology and actual work from other people, but merely of a function of their own personal and very private splendidness:

Pauline Kael in "Fear of Movies," her 1978 polemic castigating both timid movies and timid moviegoers: "There's something repressive in the atmosphere. [People] are rejecting the rare films that could stir them, frighten them, elate them." "Audiences hiss at the sight of blood now," she wrote, "as if they didn't have it in their own bodies.")

This is what our battle with militant Islam is all about, too. They want to pretend they aren't connected to modernity, because they don't want to have to be nice to women. ('Cause women, y'know, bleed. Gross!) So they want to pretend to be isolated and pure, even as they enjoy the conveniences of modern civilization. (Like internet pornography spinning off the disks of servers in Israel.)

A policy of presumed consent in organ donation is a brilliant way to countermand this stupidity. You wanna live in the modern world? Then you're in, babe... You've been made, in the mafia sense of the word. Don't walk around pretending you could have done it alone. You have very real responsibilities towards others, just as you imagine as they have to you.

> People did exist before there was
> advanced medicine

Again, fella, you don't merely "exist". You thrive in a safety which the wealthiest kings couldn't have dreamt of just a few centuries ago. "Advanced medicine" has made your food safe and nutritious and fresh and novel. It's allowed you to sit attentively in classrooms for YEARS instead of worrying about dinner, about whether cooking it improperly was going to make you sick. It's made all the other people in your life --your clients, vendors, bus drivers, authors, musicians and politicians-- healthy enough to enrich your life. If you just want to "exist", take off your clothes, forget everything you ever knew, and walk naked into the rain forest. We'll call you if we need you.

> What has medical science done for me?

There's just nothing to admire about that question.

Crid Says:

“So no college, correct? (Tippoff: "Rather", the prissy way, twice.)”

Oh goodness… this is really all you have to say on the subject?

No counter points?… No list of arguments that would support your position and actually handle that pesky little thing called the burden of proof, which I remind you is still yours in this debate.

In any event, if all you’ve got is some feeble belief that you have more education than I do and this somehow makes my argument weak and your argument strong I’ll really have to call into question the quality of your education.

I say this because when I was in college, I took a very useful methods of reasoning course that went over in gruesome detail why those sorts of arguments are fallacious.

This is a classic example of an appeal to accomplishment which is a fallacy where someone criticizes an argument not on the basis of the argument, but on whether or not the person putting forth the argument has achieved some feat similar to you.

For someone as well educated as you are claiming to be you should know better.

Furthermore, if that is really the path you want to take you will still lose this debate because it is functionally impossible for you to have earned a higher degree than the one I possess. Unlike you however, I don’t see it as good form to go flaunting a PhD around as if that somehow is the “I win” button of any debate.

The other obnoxious thing I find about your method of argumentation is that you sit there asserting that each and every one of us owes a debt to society for the scientific progress we have made over the past century. As someone who actually spends their time in a lab, performing experiments, learning new things and pushing the envelop of what we know in order to improve the lives of those around me, I find it rather odd that you would seek to tell me what the deal was.

I never went into the field of scientific inquiry so that everyone else could owe me something. You don’t owe me your lungs because I might discover something useful that benefits your life. You never signed up for that, that was never in the deal.

I don’t get to do you a favor and then determine the cost of that favor. Similarly, the scientists and doctors who came before me and whose work I benefit from never did that favor for us while reserving the right to put a price on it after the fact.

So save me your high minded talk about what we owe society. What I owe society is to do my best to be a good citizen and contribute, I don’t owe society my lungs, my kidney, my liver, or any other organs I have. If someone wants to donate them that is their choice, it is not an obligation.

However, since you seem to be functioning under the belief that you have an obligation to pay out at the demand of scientists and medical professionals, you can always send me a blank check to show your gratitude.

[Let's say] I'm born healthy, I have no significant problems throughout my life, and I die in a car accident at the age of 25. What has medical science done for me?

In this scenario, modern medical science will have done a lot for you.

How much prenatal care did you and Mom get?

Did Mom get an ultrasound?

How about pre-natal vitamins?

Was your development monitored to ensure you were healthy?

Did a doctor get a family medical history to alert your parents to any potential genetic diseases down the line?

Did she drink or smoke during pregnancy; or did she heed her doctor's advice (based on modern medical science) not to?

Were you born in a clean, antiseptic hospital?

Was a neo-natal ICU standing by in case of difficulties?

Thanks to modern medical science, your life expetancy, barring your accident, would have been 70+ years. You'd have put off marriage and having children because you would still have had plenty of time.

[Compare that to our ancestors who started having children at an age when you were still in high school. They reached 40 with a sigh of relief and then started bargaining with God for just one more gout-ridden arthritic year.]

Your generally upbeat outlook and happiness would have been, in part, attributable to modern medical science. It's hard to be happy-go-lucky when yet another plague is waiting around the corner.

If you'd survived your accident and been rushed to the hospital in a modern ambulance, your chances of keeping your limbs and not dying of sepsis (or gangrene or a host of other disgusting things that attend poorly-treated wounds) would have been pretty high.

I'm not in agreement with Crid that people should automatically be opted in for organ donation.

But I am in agreement with him that too many people take for granted the benefits civilization and modernity have bestowed upon us and wail about how unfair it is when they're asked to chip in their portion (jury duty, taxes, insurance, blood/organ donation, etc.).

Soon they'll have synthetic organ transplants, so donors won't be needed. Oh wait, they already are starting to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14047670

> No counter points?…

You're not interesting enough to deal with


> too many people take for granted the benefits
> civilization and modernity have bestowed

It's a start... I mean, you're still wrong about opt-in.

Freakonomics is the cite I bungled earlier.

> Soon they'll have synthetic organ transplants,
> so donors won't be needed.

Futurism like that can be pretty spazzy... The great stuff never arrives. When I was kid, we had Star Trek on TV. The original one, with chubby Shatner. This was years ago.

Now, a case could be made that some of that stuff has happened. While everyone agrees that the monthly fees are kinda high, an Iphone is generally regarded as a better travel accessory than a Star Trek Tricorder... More colorful display, fits in your pocket, better MP3 player.

But I'm still waiting for a Phaser.

...And for a sparkly Transporter. ("Energize!") And for faster-than-light space travel in which the paradoxes of time and gravitation are thoughtlessly, wordlessly ignored.

...And for a green-skinned sex-woman from another planet who likes to dance around me --the ship's captain, mind you-- in a skimpy bikini, nipples splayed hither & yon, butt-cheeks saluting to & fro.

People go nuts with this stuff. It's not a problem until daydreams interfere with policy. When PETA complains about animal testing, they'll often suggest that the information gleaned could be better provided by computers... As if the data in those spreadsheets hadn't originated in lab tests on animals.

This-or-that organ may well be replaced by shiny new polymers... But for the next twenty centuries or so, medicine for most of humanity is going to be an organic battleground of fleshy infections and clumsy drugs, especially in the poorer parts of the world. We can't hope to dispense AIDS treatments in Africa until they get some reliable refrigerators.

Futurism is said to have spread its wings at the 1939 World's Fair. Postrel recently did a good article about the decline of this kind of thing. This link includes background stuff.

And if you're really reading all this stuff...

...and fer Chrissakes, if you are, how fucked up is your Thursday afternoon?...

...consider this tweet about Moses, mentioned in the Reason piece.

Sunny futurists can really, really screw the pooch.

And, I screwed up the name of the book again. It's "Superfreakonomics" by Leavitt & Dubner.

Here's a link to some of their shorthand considerations of the issue.

(Note the shit-eating grins on the faces of their blurb pictures at the top of the page. That's what happens when you write a career-making, general-interest bestseller, out of the blue, before you reach middle age. Your face goes that way and it sticks).

We about done here? OK, fine. Glass of cab... Yeah. Thanks. No, we're good with just the breadsticks. Thanks.

"We about done here? OK, fine. Glass of cab... Yeah. Thanks. No, we're good with just the breadsticks. Thanks."

We each agree that the other person's position sucks. Fair enough. I got the next round.

"This-or-that organ may well be replaced by shiny new polymers... "

Well... there's a start.

Radwaste,

Many of these things are actually much closer than most people are aware.

Several groups are also working on developing artificial blood that won't require refrigeration because it isn't based upon living cellular material.

My suspicion is that we'll see many of these type of innovations hit the market within 20 years.

The faster then light travel problem wasnt ignored it was just poorly explained.

The warp drived creates a bubble around the ship which cases the spacetime in front of the ship to expand while the spacetime behind the ship contracts, so it isnt acctually the ship that is moving faster then light but the faric of spacetime itself sealed within the bubble created by the warpfield

Oh.

(That probably explains the jittery Princess Greennips as well.)

No, thats just a hormonal teenage fantasy

As opposed to "a bubble around the ship which cases the spacetime in front of the ship to expand"?

This is precisely, precisely the topic of this thread. People's daydreams are so alluring that they don't care about any correspondence to reality.

Bubbles, Loojy! Bubbles! THAT'S how it works!

"Warpfield"!

SCIENCE!

Well, its an interesting enough concept as far as scifi goes.

Ofcousre it rests on the premis that spacetime exists independently of matter and energy

Besides how many scientist brought about things that were once science fiction? Nuclear power, spaceflight, hand held communicatuon devices, organ transplants, plastic surgery, cloning; there is probably hundreds of things we take for granted today that began as little more than an idea of a fiction writer decades ago

> its an interesting enough concept as
> far as scifi goes.

This is why I haven't read any scifi since college. "Let's pretend the physical universe has nothing to do with observed reality, and then we'll write a novel!"

When Christians do this, you get the Left Behind series and similar appeals to primitivism, the kinds of things that make people afraid of organ donation.

Bubbles, Looj!

There is fantasy scifi, and hard scifi crid. Lightning genoraters, submarines, lasers, all started out as scifi

So cut a check to PETA, and/or Pat Robertson.

Bubbles in the warpfield!

No you idgit, the bubble is the warpfield

If your going to insult someone it would be far more effective to get the details right.

And now I'm confused, how did PETA and Pat Roberston get involved?

> bubble is the warpfield

Since neither exists, am I expected to care? This is the quintessence of religious faith... You want so badly for it to be true, to build a life around daydream forces... Just as Peta thinks people can use "computers" instead of biology. Nonesuch physics, nonesuch biology.

It would be cute if it were true, like any number of Biblical miracles.

It's pathetic.

J.R. shot Joan Collins, you know! Betty Rubble aborted Caspar's love child!

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, you might have a bubble in your warpfield. Spock out!

Right, I'm still confused as to your distain for scifi being justified by PETA's actions.

Airplanes, TV, 3d movies, TiVo, all started out as science fiction.

Loojy, wake the fuck up. THE TOOTH FAIRY began as science fiction. Christ on a stick, son.

Really? Explain how mythical fairies are related to science in any way

Remember the Good Witch of the North?

Bubbles, babe!

Next time you complain about incoherence of believers, it will be tough to stay awake.

That assume facts not in evidence, namley that I belive scifi to be real