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Title: The Case for Legalizing Organ Sales
Source:
Reason
URL Source: https://reason.com/2019/08/14/the-case-for-legalizing-organ-sales/
Published: Aug 14, 2019
Author: John Stossel
Post Date: 2019-08-14 08:31:36 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 6846
Comments: 39
Have you volunteered to be an organ donor? I did. I just clicked the box on the government form that asks if, once I die, I'm willing to donate my organs to someone who needs them. Why not? Lots of people need kidneys, livers, etc. When I'm dead, I sure won't need mine. Still, there are not enough donors. So, more than 100,000 Americans are on a waiting list for kidneys. Taking care of them is so expensive, it consumes almost 3 percent of the federal budget! So why not allow Americans to sell an organ? People already legally sell blood, plasma, sperm, eggs, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney? People have two. We can live a full life with just one. If the U.S. allowed people to sell, the waiting list for kidneys would soon disappear. "Poor people are going to be hurt," replies philosophy professor Samuel Kerstein in my latest video. Kerstein advised the World Health Organization, which supports the near universal laws that ban selling organs. "Body parts to be put into Americans will come from poor countries," warns Kerstein. "I don't want to see poor people in Pakistan having their lives truncated." What arrogance. People have free will. Poor people are just as capable of deciding what's best for them as rich people. Who are you, I asked Kerstein, to tell people they may not? "We are people who care about people who are different from us," he replied, "and poorer than we are. That's why we care." These are "vacuous moralisms," replies Lloyd Cohen, an attorney who's long argued against the ban on organ-selling. "Transplant surgeons make money. Transplant physicians make money. Hospitals, drug companies make money," he points out. "Everybody can get paid except the person delivering the irreplaceable part!" He's right, of course, except that today some donors do get paid. Whenever foolish governments ban things that many people want, black markets appear. Some people go overseas and buy organs from shady middlemen. Some make secret deals in America. The process would be much safer, and prices lower, if buying and selling were legal. "Financial incentives work for everything!" says Cohen. "They work for food; they work for housing; they work for clothing!" He calls the warnings that "the weak and poor will be exploited" paternalistic. "We heard the same argument with surrogacy," he points out. "Then you interview the women. (They say) this is a wonderful thing that they can do. And they get paid!" Oddly, the one country that allows the selling of organs is Iran. The government buys organs from people willing to sell. I don't trust statistics from Iran, but a PBS report claims legalization has dramatically reduced the waiting time for a kidney. Twenty-four years ago, Cohen went on 60 Minutes to argue for legalization of organ sales. At the time, he joined the debate simply because he strongly felt the ban was unjust. But now Cohen has learned that his own kidneys are failing. He needs a transplant. He won't break the law and turn to the black market. He hopes to get a kidney though a group called MatchingDonors that pairs altruistic volunteers with people who need organs. Remarkably, a woman volunteered to give Cohen one of her kidneys. She's now being tested to see if she is a match for him. If not, Cohen will be back on the waiting list with 102,914 other Americans. Most will die, waiting. "Organs that could restore people to health and extend life are instead being buried and burned," sighs Cohen. All because timid governments would rather suppress commerce than give patients a market-based new shot at life.
People already legally sell blood, plasma, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney?
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Maybe the rich can buy your poor nephews organs when nephew is having a bad day. Why not sell your kid too it did come from your body. Sicko article.
Although they're not as popular as they were several centuries ago, sales of pipe organs should be encouraged. Perhaps the government could subsidize the pipe organ industry. I don't care for electronic organs.
Liberals are like Slinkys. They're good for nothing, but somehow they bring a smile to your face as you shove them down the stairs.
And this article, right here, is perhaps the poster child for the reason that economics MUST be subordinated to morality in lawmaking.
Nothing immoral about saving a life.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. Unintended consequences. It will morph into a world where the poor have to sell an organ to some rich dude in order to buy a loaf of bread.
Because the rich would exploit the poor. As they did in Pakistan.
I agree with you. The problem is liberals call murdering children moral. They call all kinds of stuff that is immoral moral. They call moral stuff immoral. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. ... I have seen what is good called evil and what is evil called good.
Or a lung? An eye? Maybe because the body doesn't replace a kidney or a lung or an eye.
Mighty white of you. Would you be willing to donate your organs before you die? Because that's what we're talking about.
You are not always as we portray you as heartless. It is interesting how you come to this conclusion and Deckard who is a "champion" for the oppressed comes to a different view. It would be interesting to know the thinking process of both of you that brings you to your conclusions. On the one hand you don't seem to give a shit (misterwhite) when an innocent person is harmed by the police. Deckard seems obsessed with it. Yet you see how the poor would be exploited and you care while Deckard doesn't seem to see it or hasn't made it clear yet.
I do when they did nothing to deserve it. In all the posts you've seen, can you give me one example where the police intentionally harmed an "innocent" person? Those are the people I defend.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. ... I have seen what is good called evil and what is evil called good. The balance to be struck, for me, is on matters of life and death, permanent matters, versus matters of personal behavior. So, for example, I draw a firm line when it comes to murdering children: no. Therefore, no abortion - including in cases of rape (one does not acquire the right to murder a child because one has been raped). Selling organs is permanently weakening/internally maiming another for the benefit of some other party. If done out of altruism, it is well. But if it reduced to a mere economic matter, then the desperately poor will be forced by circumstances into doing it. We know this from the experience of mass castration in China in order to serve as a court eunuch to prevent one's family from starving. The rich will always use their wealth to extract behavior out of the poor - but there has to be limits on that. On the other hand, when it comes to things like drinking alcohol, dancing or private sexual behavior - moral issues to many - I am not willing to have a heavy set of laws to enforce pure morality. My reasoning is straightforward: people will not obey those laws, they are too restrictive. Once you get a population accustomed to casually breaking the laws, they will, and you'll have a society that is worse than if you didn't have those laws. Save the big guns of law for the things that matter most, like not killing babies, or old people - economically it makes perfect sense to euthanize retirees when they develop any terminal illness - and not harvesting organs for the primary benefit of the upper class.
They won't even allow payment to cover funeral expenses. Obviously, the organs are totally worthless. Or the donor (or their family) could be paid, just like the surgeons and nurses and all the middlemen. In the case of kidneys, we only need one to live. So you might have to consider kidneys to be a special case as many kidney donors are not dead or in a coma and brain-dead. I tend to think that you could improve organ donation rates quite a bit by allowing payments to cover funeral costs. I'm not so sure you would want to let a college kid auction off his extra kidney for quick cash to cover college loans or pay for a new car.
Obviously, there needs to be some restrictions. I agree that getting a few thousand bucks to buy a new car would not qualify. Apparently, kidneys fetch about $262,000 each on the black market. As far as selling your own liver, since that organ has the capacity to regenerate, you could sell half of it.
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. It would be interesting to know the thinking process of both of you that brings you to your conclusions. On the one hand you don't seem to give a shit (misterwhite) when an innocent person is harmed by the police. Deckard seems obsessed with it. Yet you see how the poor would be exploited and you care while Deckard doesn't seem to see it or hasn't made it clear yet. I'm not an organ donor. I did check off the box for some years when I was younger. Then, about 20 years ago, I really thought about it and realized I was actually giving doctors/hospitals an incentive to off me and sell off my organs to other doctors. All of whom would be making money and who could break their supposed ethical rules at any time without any legal repercussions, even if caught redhanded doing it. And the state licensing boards are there to cover up and minimize medical scandals, not to actually punish wrongdoing. If you did allow organ sales, you would open the possibility that a family with a young family member in a coma or at death's door and unconscious with no prospects for recovery will get cut up for parts and they could fund a nice worldwide cruise and a vacation home from the proceeds from their heart/lung, corneas, kidneys, liver, etc. I think it would be fine to offer to cover funeral expenses for organ donations. It would probably be too much to allow a family to make more than twice the going rate for a decent funeral in their locale. You wouldn't want to give some hillbilly family an incentive to part out their kids for serious amounts of cash. Because for all the endless wailing about how much every parent loves their kid(s), they don't. They do desperately desire that other people think that they love their kids wholeheartedly and unconditionally. But any examination of history will reveal that people don't love their kids as much as they want other people to think that they do. I do think there is evidence that doctors have given the family the rush on signing the forms to part their unconscious family member out. Yet, among those who refuse, a certain number will survive and awaken even if they might not ever be quite the same person again. It happens pretty regularly. If you live in a rural area, don't be too quick to sign off on the local cowtown surgeon urging you to donate your child's organs "so some good can come from the tragic end of their life". It may be that that barnyard surgeon is in cahoots with his big-city med school buddies who just love getting their hands on some of those healthy young organs. There may not be money changing hands but letters of recommendation could be made to get Rural Doctor's kid into Harvard or Yale or a job on Wall Street. The elites know how to take care of their own. They create systems and exploit them for their own benefit, all the while explaining to us just how superior their ethical views are and how they could never operate in their own selfish interests. It's bunk. Just as we saw with the Hollyweird elites who were getting their kids into prestigious colleges by bribing coaches to give them a "scholarship" for a sport they had never even participated in, you can be quite certain that there are mercenary doctors who mouth the platitudes about their oath to "do no harm" but who have the ethical and moral standards of Josef Mengele when you get right down to the truth. There are more twisted doctors out there than anyone knows about. And they know they have impunity because no one is willing to take them on. Sooner or later, one of those doctors will be able to pull the plug on you or your loved ones.
Or one lung. Or one eye. Actually, you can live without both eyes. How about $500,000 for both eyes? How many poor people would volunteer to go blind for $500,000? Supply would exceed demand. Meaning the price would drop. We'd be at $50,000 in a month.
Exactly. You wouldn't allow it for trivial purchases and you would have to limit the reimbursement so you didn't give people a serious financial incentive to terminate their injured or dying relatives. Woh. I had no idea but I don't doubt you. There are a lot of rich people out there around the world. I agree entirely. And there should be no restrictions on sales of tissue that can regenerate. In addition, such donors should automatically move to the head of the list if they themselves require a similar transplant. Reward the donors in that way. So if someone donates a healthy kidney out of generosity, they should move to the head of the donor list if their remaining kidney does fail them in later years.
Oh is that right, King Deckard? YOU of all people are going to dictate to others how they can or cannot spend their own money? It's fun to watch how you react when your Libertarian fantasy world meets reality.
Is Gatlin using your account?
Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. You may be unaware that there are those who desire "the gift of blindness". Also, the "gift of silence". Those who want their eyes removed so they can be truly blind often resort to using acid to destroy their own eyes. There is a neurologist (I think) who is still in court and who is in her wheelchair wearing leg braces who is suing to get her spinal cord severed. So she can enjoy life finally through the "gift of being a quadraplegic". Because she's always felt like she should be immobile in a wheelchair. But she is perfectly capable of walking and is in good health. The Federalist: Woman Demands Doctors Sever Her Spinal Cord To Align Body To Mind, ‘Same As A Transsexual Man’ Yes, it is the same as a transsexual man. Surgeons being asked or required to cut off healthy tissue instead of telling the shrinks to do their job and help these people to adjust to their own bodies. To treat dismorphias, not amputate them. And once you deal with that, try to consider the people who want their leg severed (usually the left leg just above the knee). Of they hate one of their arms (usually results in left arm amputations in mid-forearm). Or they hate their genitals, the so-called nulls. These are not asexuals (who just don't want sex). They want to be sexless humans instead. So you have men who will beg to have their genitals severed and the wound stiched up and formed so that they just have a hole to urinate from while squatting. And that is their holy grail. Doctors always balk at these requests (or they used to) but people with this kind of dismorphia will often get desperate and hack their own genitals off with a knife or arrange an "accident" with power tools or in some way so seriously damage their genitals that there is no choice left for the doctors but to amputate what tissue remains. To answer your question, there are people out there who would love to have their eyes removed. And they would pay a doctor to do it. Maybe we need a new organ-swapping/amputation dating service so we can match all these people up with their counterparts. After all, a masochist is only lonely if they lack a sadist to abuse them.
Well, not that I favor paying for organ donations, but you could give a tax deduction for it -- as we do for other charitable contributions. This way there would be no incentive for the poor.
Everything you said. And thank you for saying it too. I'm a bit burnt out trying to explain moral things to people for whom economics is the nec plus ultra of human existence. In general, I've settled into a "might makes right" argument, not because I really believe that at a fundamental moral level (other than the fact that, when it comes to God, might really DOES make right - literally), but because bickering with disagreeable people is a waste of time. If they have power, you have to deal with them. If they don't, you don't.
I agree. But in return, I do not want my tax dollars used to treat the consequences of that behavior. Ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Fine by me. Ride nude for all I care. But get a concussion after an accident? You're on your own. You will not be treated unless you can pay. Fair enough?
I know those people. They were previously given "the gift of stupidity".
No. I understand your logic, but once again, it's putting money above people. Virtually everything we do has risks - food, travel, drinking. Just breathing the air is risky because other people are polluting it. Bad things happen to everybody, and as humane people in a country wealthy enough to do it, we should have universal health insurance that covers everybody for all injuries, even if self-inflicted (directly or indirectly), just like France does - and just like Bernie Sanders wants to have here. He's right about that. To do otherwise would be to put a massive set of judges within medical care, vastly empowering the government, or the insurance industry - whomever - to rule on the morality of people's decisions in their lives. I'm not willing to experience that loss of liberty, but I AM willing to tax the rest of society sufficiently to pay for everybody to have their liberty and pay for the health expenses that come from people driving too fast, eating too much, smoking, drinking, trying drugs, breathing air polluted by others, accumulating radiation from foreign bomb tests, etc. Yes, it is a tax. Yes, it costs money. No, it's not completely fair. But it leaves us all more free if we do not have either the anxiety of going without medical care for ourselves or our kids (if they do something stupid), and it frees us from having to submit to the moral inspection of our lives by some judgmental prude if we get sick and need care. All experience has shown that we can expect the prudes to deny most public insurance coverage, because virtually EVERY illness can be traced back to SOME behavior.
The poor don't pay enough taxes that it would amount to an incentive unless it's just a tax credit that will result in a refund. Adding government into the mix may not improve the situation or prevent abuse of the system. I also think we should simply eliminate the option for any family member to donate a child's organs or the organ of any person under their guardianship. I think that organ donations should require positive prior advance permission to harvest organs, perhaps as part of a living will legal document. No one should be allowed to donate another person's organs at all. Convince them while they're still alive and healthy to be a donor and/or pay them for it. At the very least, any sales of organs could not go to the family but would have to apply to the donor's final expenses and estate (but none of that money could flow from the estate to the person who made the decision to make the donation). IOW, you couldn't get anything more than the funeral costs out of donating someone else's organs. And you would then be excluded from receiving any "profits" from the sale of organs. Even a system like that would not be bullet-proof but you could greatly increase organ donations and curb the worst incentives for the worst people to try to profit from donating the organs of those over whom they are legal guardians.
Which would be a Heteronomous culture: Theonomous culture can be found in some place like India and the previous West. Theos meaning God and nomos meaning law. The idea in a theonomous culture is that God’s law is so self-evident within the human heart that there are some imperatives within you that find a consensus in society. That’s God’s law in you , the nomos the law of the Theos, God, that is so ingrained in your soul that there is an emerging consensus within society of certain norms that everyone agrees that are noble or the opposite of them being evil and not to be pursued. Heteronomous culture can be found in the Middle East. Heteros meaning different and nomos--- law, a different law, where there are two distinct sets in operation. There is the controlling few and the masses down here. In secular terminology Marxism is a heteronomous culture where the handful at the top dictate everything for the masses below. In religious terms Islam functions as a heteronomous culture. Either the Ilama or the Imam or whoever, the dictates are given to you from above and the masses then are told to follow along. There is a heteronomy to it, the law comes from above dictated to the masses whether you want to do it or not. Autonomous culture can be found in the Western world; autos meaning self, nomos meaning law, you’re a self-law. You’re a law unto yourself. You follow your individual autonomy. Post Christian West culture would not fit into a theonomous culture, it would not fit into a heteronomous (yet) culture by definition. What is being preached in our postmodern, post-Christian secular society is that we are an autonomous culture. But that lasts as long, as you say, someone has more of a 'will' and also has the power. So eventually, ignoring moral absolutes established by The Law Giver, God, western culture will eventually be a heteronomous culture as someone always prevails when "truth" is made out to be "opinion" or what the elite define it as. George Orwell spinning in his grave: "The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history." George Orwell
You're being too kind to Bernie here. Medicare For All will close half the rural hospitals in the country. Maybe there should be fewer rural hospitals and we should instead have better air ambulance services and have fewer but much larger rural hospitals instead. To me, that would make more sense and would result in far better care than those patients currently in Cowtown Hospital with mediocre doctors trying to care for them, generally not much more effective than palliative care. But let's just go for more fairness across the board. Along with Medicare For All, let's have Legalcare For All. Free lawyers for everyone. Oh, and cut the legal pay allowed for lawyers in half and close half the law firms in America. Tackling both issues at once isn't so farfetched. After all, it is the lawyers whose malpractice suits have caused such rises in malpractice insurance and hospital insurance. You may recall how North Carolina almost ran out of pediatricians after John Edwards scored some key lawsuits with huge awards by foolish juries. Many doctors left their practices or moved to other states as a result of what he did. Washington Times: Edwards' malpractice suits leave bitter taste, 8/16/2004 One of the most successful personal-injury lawyers in North Carolina history, Mr. Edwards won dozens of lawsuits against doctors and hospitals across the state that he now represents in the Senate. He won more than 50 cases with verdicts or settlements of $1 million or more, according to North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and 31 of those were medical-malpractice suits. During his 20 years of suing doctors and hospitals, he pioneered the art of blaming psychiatrists for patients who commit suicide and blaming doctors for delivering babies with cerebral palsy, according to doctors, fellow lawyers and legal observers who followed Mr. Edwards’ career in North Carolina. “The John Edwards we know crushed [obstetrics, gynecology] and neurosurgery in North Carolina,” said Dr. Craig VanDerVeer, a Charlotte neurosurgeon. “As a result, thousands of patients lost their health care.” “And all of this for the little people?” he asked, a reference to Mr. Edwards’ argument that he represented regular people against mighty foes such as prosperous doctors and big insurance companies. “How many little people do you know who will supply you with $60 million in legal fees over a couple of years?” If you like Medicare For All and my ideas about Legalcare For All, just wait until you hear my ideas about BankingCare For All. It's a real peach!
Well, yeah. I just wanted to point out that, no matter how perverse it sounds to 99.9% of us, some people just crave such things. Their lives revolve around it. It's not reassuring to know that such persons, just like with the trannies, apparently have about a 75% rate of satisfaction if they achieve their surgical goal. A smaller group has regrets about pursuing their surgical fantasy. And, overall, psychiatrists say that they are all basically about as neurotic after their surgery than they were before their surgery, no happier or unhappy, more social or less sociable, more inclined to finding romance than not. IOW, they're no happier or fulfilled. But they are for the most part more satisfied to deal with their main surgical obsession than not. Because they do get so obsessed over the frustration of their desire for a major surgical intervention that they just go further and further with their obsession. Only to find that it still won't actually make them happy or more popular or more able to be fulfilled. Another dirty secret of the sex-change clinics is what happens to these people. For M2Fs, they quite often work as she-male prostitutes to fund their surgeries. They also appear in porn for the same reason. However, being a street prostitute who is a she-male is pretty dangerous because of the types of weirdos they attract. So they have incentives to finish the process to become a "woman". And just what kinds of jobs do they get when they finally become a woman? Well, of the non-autogynephilic ones (see below for more about the men who are in love with themselves), about 90% of them become "female" call girls. They couldn't be she-male call girls but they can be call girls once they have surgeries and become more "passable" in their looks. And that is the final result of most any M2F that you ever heard of. Other than a few rare cases, they are mutilated men working as call girls. And, for the few who get married to some guy and try to raise kids, they often leave suburbia to go back to being a call girl. Because they still have male brains and desire promiscuity more than being maternal toward children or faithful to just one man. Because a M2F tranny just doesn't have the same concerns and interests as an actual female has. This is largely because they can't get pregnant and they are predisposed toward promiscuous male sexuality and, as tranny prostitutes, to making a good living from it. As with any other prostitutes, these M2F prostitutes do derive a sense of power over men they sleep with, something that some of them find addictive. It's a very frustrating area of medicine to read about. Some of the crap these transsexuals put themselves through is just unbelievable, mostly for very marginal results, especially with the F2M transsexuals (who really are pitiable). Then you have some real oddball cases. Like about a third of all M2F transsexuals are what is called autogynephilic transsexuals. These are men whose primary sexual arousal is fantasizing that they are a woman. Some of them fantasize that they are breastfeeding a child. Others fantasize about menstruating. Still others fantasize about a male in their presence sexually but they do not actually desire a man and rarely resort to homosexual behavior; they like the idea of a man but don't ever act on it. Such men do supposedly have a telltale behavior: if they always have sex with their wives while laying on a bed on their back with their wives on top of them. In such a case, they're kind of pretending that their wife is a man and is mounting them as a woman. Then you have the more ordinary autogynephilic transvestites. These are straight guys who love to dress in pink frilly things and who want to be seen that way by another man who will treat them like a lady and use them sexually. But the true autogynephilic transsexual will generally dress in bra/panties and sit on their bed in front of a mirror and wearing a wig/makeup, masturbating to the image of themselves presented as a woman. And if an autogynephilic transsexual does get a sex change, they rarely actually hook up with men even if they could. They just continue their love affair with the image of themselves as woman, usually using a mirror. But it's easier for them once they have boobs and no nasty man-parts that they have to tuck back to get a clean pantyline in front. Just for fun, I thought I'd mention that some women go for a sex change because they want to be a gay man. Yeah, I know. So, yeah, they want to have sex with a man but only if they can present themselves with surgical scars from their breast removal and tiny fake-penis that could actually satisfy no woman (or man) because it never gets hard enough because a clit simply lacks the structural support needed to penetrate, the way that a real penis can penetrate various orifices. So these F2M trannies go through years of surgeries just to achieve, at best, a squishy little "cock", fake balls sewn up into their ex-labia, and a couple of surgical scars just below their "pecs" from their breast removal. And some of them go through all this just so they can be a gay man. Think about that, digest it, get your head around it. It's sick, it's dismorphic and we shouldn't indulge these people with surgery to cut or remove or alter healthy tissue. I have read a fair amount on these topics. Sometimes if I get a little depressed about something, I do feel better to read about just how sick and screwed up some people are and I'm glad I have no larger problems than I do have. It's a little like seeing someone in a wheelchair and feeling grateful that you don't have to deal with such a challenge in your life. Or that you shouldn't complain too much over your own lot in life.
I said Medicare for all, not Medicaid for all. But I'm content to take your argument to its logical conclusion and round off in favor of Medicare for None. Let those over 65 provide for their own private health insurance, just like everybody else. Eventually the old almost all end up on Medicaid, so let's just do away with Medicare completely and get there quicker.
And as a final cost savings, we can just get rid of Medicaid too. Survival of the fittest: people without means live as long as their natural constitutions will let them, with the strong living to old age, and the weak or unlucky dying when they naturally die. Those who are financially fit, then, can afford the luxury of high end medical care and purchase it with their own money.
The West has never been an autonomous culture. We have a set of laws that are enforced, by armed force, on everybody, but that are enforced less rigidly on the upper classes. This has always been true. By your tripartite division of law, we are a heteronomous culture that likes to believe it is autonomous, but is not.
Basically they do. The only thing their payroll tax deductions paid for is hospital expenses (Part A). You have to purchase Part B if you want coverage for visits to the doctor and pay for Part D if you want prescription coverage. Medicare for all? Hah! They can't afford it.
And I think that is the point.
When I was younger Medicaid didn't exist. People weren't dying in the streets. They were helped by others on a voluntary basis -- church, community, friends, family, neighbors, etc.
Exactly.
A much bigger and radical change than even 0bamacare. And this time there would certainly be death panels. Like Britain's NHS.
You know that's a Lefty myth, the original one that was used to help sell FDR's New Deal. Because the elderly were being abandoned to die alone in the cold in the streets. It's as much as myth as the nonsense about Wall Street bankers committing suicide by jumping from skyscraper windows in NYC in 1929. Except that these mass suicides never happened either. Someone searched for such info years back and discovered they could not find a record of a single executive in the financial sector who did commit suicide in October 1929.
I'm not ready for nude motorcyclists. I've seen those naked bicycle riders before and it isn't pretty. But at least they're slim from pedaling those bicycles around.
#2. To: Deckard (#0)
#3. To: Deckard (#0)
#4. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
And this article, right here, is perhaps the poster child for the reason that economics MUST be subordinated to morality in lawmaking.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#5. To: Deckard (#4)
Nothing immoral about saving a life.
#6. To: Deckard (#0)
So why not allow Americans to sell an organ?
#7. To: Vicomte13 (#3)
that economics MUST be subordinated to morality in lawmaking.
#8. To: Deckard (#0)
People already legally sell blood, plasma, sperm, eggs, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney?
#9. To: Deckard (#0)
I just clicked the box on the government form that asks if, once I die, I'm willing to donate my organs to someone who needs them.
#10. To: misterwhite, tooconservative, watchman (#6)
Because the rich would exploit the poor. As they did in Pakistan.
#11. To: A K A Stone (#10)
On the one hand you don't seem to give a shit (misterwhite) when an innocent person is harmed by the police.
#12. To: A K A Stone (#7)
(Edited)
I agree with you. The problem is liberals call murdering children moral. They call all kinds of stuff that is immoral moral. They call moral stuff immoral.
#13. To: Deckard (#0)
"Transplant surgeons make money. Transplant physicians make money. Hospitals, drug companies make money," he points out. "Everybody can get paid except the person delivering the irreplaceable part!"
#14. To: Tooconservative (#13)
(Edited)
I'm not so sure you would want to let a college kid auction off his extra kidney for quick cash to cover college loans or pay for a new car.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#15. To: A K A Stone, misterwhite, Vicomte13 (#10)
It is interesting how you come to this conclusion and Deckard who is a "champion" for the oppressed comes to a different view.
#16. To: Tooconservative (#13)
In the case of kidneys, we only need one to live.
#17. To: Deckard, Vicomte13 (#14)
Obviously, there needs to be some restrictions. I agree that getting a few thousand bucks to buy a new car would not qualify.
Apparently, kidneys fetch about $262,000 each on the black market.
As far as selling your own liver, since that organ has the capacity to regenerate, you could sell half of it.
#18. To: Deckard (#14)
I agree that getting a few thousand bucks to buy a new car would not qualify.
#19. To: misterwhite (#18)
It's fun to watch how you react when your Libertarian fantasy world meets reality.
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
#20. To: misterwhite (#16)
How about $500,000 for both eyes? How many poor people would volunteer to go blind for $500,000?
#21. To: Tooconservative (#17)
and you would have to limit the reimbursement
#22. To: Tooconservative (#15)
#23. To: Vicomte13 (#12)
On the other hand, when it comes to things like drinking alcohol, dancing or private sexual behavior - moral issues to many - I am not willing to have a heavy set of laws to enforce pure morality.
#24. To: Tooconservative (#20)
You may be unaware that there are those who desire "the gift of blindness".
#25. To: misterwhite (#23)
Fair enough?
#26. To: misterwhite (#21)
This way there would be no incentive for the poor.
#27. To: Vicomte13 (#22)
(Edited)
In general, I've settled into a "might makes right" argument, not because I really believe that at a fundamental moral level (other than the fact that, when it comes to God, might really DOES make right - literally), but because bickering with disagreeable people is a waste of time. If they have power, you have to deal with them. If they don't, you don't.
#28. To: Vicomte13, Deckard, Vicomte13 (#25)
To do otherwise would be to put a massive set of judges within medical care, vastly empowering the government, or the insurance industry - whomever - to rule on the morality of people's decisions in their lives. I'm not willing to experience that loss of liberty, but I AM willing to tax the rest of society sufficiently to pay for everybody to have their liberty and pay for the health expenses that come from people driving too fast, eating too much, smoking, drinking, trying drugs, breathing air polluted by others, accumulating radiation from foreign bomb tests, etc.
The American Medical Association lists North Carolina’s current health care situation as a “crisis” and blames it on medical-malpractice lawsuits such as the ones that made Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards a millionaire many times over.
#29. To: misterwhite, Vicomte13 (#24)
I know those people. They were previously given "the gift of stupidity".
#30. To: Tooconservative (#28)
If you like Medicare For All
#31. To: All (#30)
#32. To: redleghunter (#27)
#33. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
Let those over 65 provide for their own private health insurance,
#34. To: Vicomte13 (#32)
By your tripartite division of law, we are a heteronomous culture that likes to believe it is autonomous, but is not.
#35. To: Vicomte13 (#31)
And as a final cost savings, we can just get rid of Medicaid too.
#36. To: Tooconservative (#26)
The poor don't pay enough taxes that it would amount to an incentive ...
#37. To: Vicomte13 (#30)
I said Medicare for all, not Medicaid for all.
#38. To: misterwhite (#35)
When I was younger Medicaid didn't exist. People weren't dying in the streets.
#39. To: misterwhite (#23)
Ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Fine by me. Ride nude for all I care.
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