People already legally sell blood, plasma, and bone marrow. Why not a kidney?
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.
#10. To: misterwhite, tooconservative, watchman (#6)
Because the rich would exploit the poor. As they did in Pakistan.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
