Recycling

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1667538]

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Opt-out" does not properly express my opinion.

A dead person is dead. If you return their liver to the family, nobody is going to eat it, or implant it, or make art with it. They're going to throw it away. So you give it to someone who IS going to do something useful with it.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Agree with this.

[innerbrat]

Everyone wants their first choice to be the default, and for everyone else to have to make the effort to opt out. Still, I fall down on - organ donation actually benefits society, whereas obeying the burial traditions of the majority culture - frankly doesn't.

Any default that doesn't give a material benefit just seems to be privileging a culture's burial rights over other people's life.

I completely think that we should respect people's wishes about what happens to their body, but in the absence of those expressed wishes, I think we should use the principle of 'do the most good'.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Everyone wants their first choice to be the default, and for everyone else to have to make the effort to opt out

It's possibly a little unfair to suggest it's about 'effort', though. For those who don't want their organs donated it may be a moral/cultural/religious thing, and it's understandable that they want what is their default moral code to also be society's default.

They're still, y'know. Wrong. But I don't think it's laziness.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

If they make it so you have to opt-out, I will do so on a point of principle. They will still have to ask my next to kin what I actually would like.

[innerbrat]

It's nice to have next of kin that can be trusted in this regard.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Years back, here in NZ, the question got included with drivers licenses. (When they decided everyone should have their photos on them, I think. Thus they thought it was a great time to ask this question too. And it's still there.)

The media blitz compelling people to tick yes to this was so overwhelming it was enough to make me tick no. And I did it partly because there was next to no real discussion about the implications. Just mostly along the lines of 'What a great idea, we should all do it!'

Now I think most people click yes, but it doesn't seem to make any difference, since we have quite an organ shortage anyway.

Also, I don't think what you decide should be public until after you're dead. Seeing 'Donor' or not on your license could influence how those seeing your license might treat you. And I don't just mean doctors, as licenses are a default ID down here.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I can't decide. Rationally the latter makes a lot of sense, but emotionally/politically it'd cause a firestorm of reaction that might end up making transplants even tougher to get.

-- Steve doesn't agree with the "man is a rational animal" thesis, as man isn't terribly rational.

[andrewducker]

All options are emotional. Some people value the lives of people who could be saved by transplants over the feelings of people who are upset over what will happen to their body after they are dead, others value things the other way around. But either way around it's based on emotion.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Whilst I think it should be opt out, that's with the caveat that doing so is made very easy, that its well publicised, and vulnerable people aren't accidentally taken advantage of. Also, that there isn't a deliberate attempt to attach stigma to opting out.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

This.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I don't plan to die, and nobody is getting my organs!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Say more?

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Most (nearly all) of the people who donate do so after having died suddenly. No amount of planning can stop you being hit by a car and left brain-dead but with perfectly functional heart, liver, lungs and kidneys. The question isn't about what happens in, say, fifty years' time when someone finds a cure for death, but about the car accident tomorrow...

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

My dad's plan: pass a law to explicitly state that all people own their organs and may do what they want to do with them, and then include within that law provision for the organs to be taken by the state unless explicitly mentioned in the will.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

With the incredible history of scientific misconduct with regards to the bodies of the poor, immigrants, the 'mentally deficient', criminals, etc.? Hell no. Opt in only.

All it would take to throw the whole opt-out system into a mess would be one overeager surgeon's appropriating the organs of someone deemed incapable of consent; after all, you don't have long after death before you have to start moving organs around, or they'll be no good any longer, and that crush for time doesn't leave a lot of room for determining whether or not the person in question was capable of not opting out. Consider also the problems of persons who are in a country illegally and may not want to make themselves visible to the state by going through the procedure to opt out (or may not have the language/access to information to know that procedure exists in the first place), but still may have strong objections to having a deceased loved one's organ distribution.

Keep in mind I say this all as someone who used to have a car with a bumper sticker that read 'Recycle Yourself: Become an Organ Donor'. Solutions involve awareness and making donation status easier -- I had to go out of my way to get a flimsy DONOR sticker on my licence when I moved to PA, and if I hadn't asked, no one would have brought it up.

[greybeta.livejournal.com]

+1

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Why am I reminded of the Invader Zim episode "Dark Harvest"?

I would like to donate my organs when I die (in some ways it's a little like living on). If the hospital asked my family though, they would get mixed answers. I'm pretty sure Jules would give her consent, but my mother might not (the only time I ever heard her express a preference it was against donating -- however it was something like 15 years ago, and she may well have changed her mind).

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Though of course, all being well, in the event of my untimely death my organs won't be donated, they'll end up in Michigan...

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Were I convinced enough of cryonics' possible efficacy and had I the money to pay for it, that would be my view too. But I think brain-only cryonics should be almost as effective as the other kind (assuming any effectiveness for either) and allow donation of the rest of the corpse. It might even make it easier to cryopreserve the brain were the other parts of the body being kept 'alive' for donation...

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

With enough preamble so this question doesn't come across as agressive, but rather in the curious manner in which it is intended...

Why?

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think the system should be opt-out, to move those who don't give a shit from the "no" column to the "yes" column; whilst of course giving people the opportunity to opt-out if that is actually what they want.

However, more importantly, I think that if you have clearly expressed a choice (by, for instance, registering on a donor or no-donor list or whatever) then THAT CHOICE should be binding on the system and that your relatives should be able to do nothing to change it. Indeed I think this should be a more important principle in a)all medicine, all the time and b)inheritance law. I am, frankly, disgusted by the current situation that means that family I hate could well end up having more of a say in what happens to me if/when I'm too ill to talk about consent myself or dead than my previous self (supposing I had taken the trouble to write my wishes down).

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

This is a tough one, isn't it. I wonder if there is a way to legally select your next of kin (aside from getting married obviously)? But then it still leaves all the people without someone they trust rather stuck. I'n really lucky that both my family and my fiance share my pro-donation views so I'm as secure as I can be in the belief they will honour my wishes. I don't know what happens if I outlive them all though - do they just go on whether you are registered for organ donation is you don't have any next of kin?

[zz]

opt-out is a Nice Idea, but default consent creates a strong incentive to give up trying to heal/prolong the life of the dying sooner.
also, what ladysisyphus said.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

Does it really though? Is there any evidence that medical professionals currently give up on people sooner if they know they are organ donors?

[sttatus-quo.livejournal.com]

I thought about this for a long time. I have mixed emotions about the opt-out option. People are entitled to the integrity of their own bodies before and after death.
People have some misconceptions about transplant. It isn't a cure- its a treatment. Transplant isn't done to restore health, it's done to salvage life- at least the parts I work most closely with are.

Maybe I'm just soured on it because I see all the complications and much less of the people who do well afterward.