Hello. Uhh, can we have your liver?

New at Reason:

Need a kidney? Take a kidney. Got a kidney? Leave a kidney (after you're dead, of course).

Sounds like a simple way to encourage more people to donate organs, right? Too simple for the AMA, as it turns out. Julian Sanchez investigates why the medical establishment wants to keep an organ-donation group from doing business.

Comments

[Kildare]

OK, so Lifesharers' plan deviates from an "established allocation algorithm that's based on some objective criteria...?

Nevertheless, more than half of the 82,000 people currently waiting for organs will die without receiving any transplant. That's 49,200 people sentenced to death by UNOS's "established allocation algorithm." (The article also mentions that in 2002, nearly 6,600 people died while waiting.)

Some algorithm!

[Douglas Fletcher]

We really ought to start growing these things instead of trying to harvest them in the wild.

[mechanic]

Problem with that is that if a foreign car is sitting in the shop waiting for a particular part, it'll still run after waiting about a year or so, when the part finally arrives.

Not so with humans.

[Douglas Fletcher]

What, you never saw the Matrix?

[mechanic]

Excuse me ... Hello? We're talking REALITY 2003 here ... hello?

(I know you were kidding) 😉

[Micha Ghertner]

I especially liked this quote from the article: "organs are a public resource".

Does anyone else see the similarity between this statement and Nozick's defense of self-ownership using the "eye-transplant" argument? If organs are a "public resource", is there anything wrong with forcibly removing one man's eye (while he is still alive) and giving it to a blind man so he can see?

Ownership of our organs seems to be as close to pure "self-ownership" as one can get. So I say, hurray for organ commodification! We need more of it.

[Sean]

Ever since witnessing then PA-Gov. Robert Casey pull off the great heart/lung transplant heist, you couldn't pay me enough to sign up to donate. If this means I don't get one when I need it, fine (although the govt. should get the hell out of the way and let us figure out how to clone and grow our own replacements).

My dead ass will be sent off to the Body Farm.

[Andy]

I agree that selling organs is wrong as it would become assisted suicide (for cash) in many cases and theoretically bailiffs confiscating property could put a price on your internal organs. After all, they would have value.

However as an atheist I can see firm ground in changing the law to automatically donate body parts on the event of death, you don't need 'em if you're dead... Doing this would save thousands of lives which can only be a good thing.

[Sean]

"law to automatically donate body parts on the event of death"

That's nuts. Just make sure there's not a matching V.I.P. at the top of the organ list (or bottom) when you have a 5050 chance of pulling through.

What if I find making some one live the rest of their life on anti-rejection drugs immoral? What if it merely perpetuates a flawed system that placates us into not demanding repeal of cloning bans that won't allow us to grow our own cloned, perfectly matched organs? As an atheist, I don't think it's wise to hand over to govt. the powers once thought to be held only by gods.

[Cracker's boy.]

They'll get my organs only when they pry them from my cold, dead... oh. Nevermind.

[Wesley Mouch]

That's 49,200 people sentenced to death by UNOS's "established allocation algorithm."

You're being old-fashioned!

[jon b.]

This is all about control of the organ supply. The medical community doesn't have any qualms about directed donation of blood, which is basically the same thing: giving some tissue to a certain other person.

[THX]

Jon, this is all about control ... (period.)

Did you really think you owned your self?

[Andy]

I can't imagine doctors letting people die to satisfy a VIP. Of all people, the doctors are the ones I really *do* trust. Making organ donation compulsory is just like making organ donor cards compulsory.

Cloning your own organs is a damn fine way to go, but the spectre of a sub class of people who's function is only to supply spare parts to their older clone, an arm at a time, makes 1984 look friendly.

"Sorry, Alf can't come to work today, he had to donate his pelvis to his brother"

Imagine knowing you only live as long as your insane, drunk, extreme sports loving brother stays in one piece...