Penny Lane on Effective Altruism and Donating a Kidney to a Stranger
"I'm trying so hard to be a perfect altruist and just failing because no one is, actually," the Confessions of a Good Samaritan filmmaker tells Reason.
Penny Lane's new Netflix documentary, Confessions of a Good Samaritan, delves into her life-changing decision to donate a kidney to a stranger. Known for her thoughtful and provocative storytelling, Lane has explored human connection and empathy in films such as Hail Satan? and The Pain of Others. Last October she spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie and shared her emotional, physical, and philosophical experience with anonymous kidney donation and the challenges that came with it.
Q: This is a film about your decision to give a kidney to a stranger. Can you tell us about the type of donation and why you decided to do this?
A: The type of donation is known as an altruistic donation. The gift is anonymous. So I don't know who received it, and I never will. It's a pretty rare practice in the United States. There's a few hundred people a year who do this—but that's a huge increase from 20 years ago when there were zero.
As you would hear from most altruistic donors, it just seemed like an obviously good idea. The amount of risk and suffering that the donor is likely to take on statistically is nothing compared to the good that you're doing for another person who's literally dying.
Q: Are you, generally speaking, utilitarian? Are you trying to maximize the good that gets done in the world?
A: I used to be a lot more, but the effective altruism movement was a very big influence on my life. There was ground that had been laid by those ideas that made me more receptive to the idea that the suffering of a distant stranger might matter as much as someone closer to me.
Q: Did you ever have second thoughts or wonder if you were making the right decision?
A: Many things made me feel that way. One thing that isn't in the film is that the surgery date kept getting pushed back—for, I'm sure, quite legitimate reasons. But it just kept getting pushed back. I am a freelancer. I was passing on jobs, and then not having the surgery. I lost a lot more money than I thought I would. And the average donor in the United States loses about $4,000 in lost wages, child care.
Q: How long is the recovery period?
A: Not very long in big-picture terms. You're in the hospital for a day, you go home, and you're up and about within a week. But I do think on another level, your body is healing for a good long time.
I got pretty depressed afterward. Partly, I'm assuming, it was a big letdown after this very intense event. And also, again, I think my body was recovering, and I was just low-energy for probably six months after the surgery.
Q: How painful was it physically?
A: There was almost no pain because we have really good painkillers now. I was just exhausted, and I was sore and stiff. It was hard to move around, and it was hard to ask for help.
I think the main thing that was hard for me was psychological because I was trying to not complain and to not care about my very insignificant problems in the face of the world. I was trying to keep the welfare of this distant stranger top of mind, and my failure to be able to do that became an inordinate amount of shame because I thought I just wasn't doing it right. That's really the conflict you see in the film. I'm trying so hard to be a perfect altruist and just failing because no one is, actually.
Q: Has this changed your attitude toward effective altruism?
A: Earlier when you said, "Am I a utilitarian?" I think I would say that I am very attracted to thinking in that way. I do think it's good to provoke yourself by asking certain questions. "Is this thing I'm doing that's meant to help people actually helping people? Or is it just making you feel good?" These are very important questions to ask.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
