Hello. Uhh, can we have your liver?
Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 1:17 am
The title is from the “Live Organ Transplants” sketch on Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life“. I’ve seen this referenced a fair bit recently about the British Prime Minister’s plans to make organ donation opt-out rather than opt-in.
Some people seem to be in uproar about this but I can’t really understand why. At the moment many people die waiting for organ transplants. Many people die with perfectly good organs and no problem with organ donation but never got round to getting a card to signify their consent. This is, in my humble opinion, stupid and unjust.
Moving to an opt-out system would save many lives so if people have religious/moral/whatever reasons for not wanting their organs removed on death they can stop it happening. The proposed legislation also says that the family can object and stop the donation going through so I’m surprised by peoples’ opposition. Personally I’d like to be able to still have a donation card so my family can’t object as I don’t think it is their right to do so.
What do other people think? The state over-reaching again or doing something good? This seems to be working in Spain with organ donation up 250%. Does anyone know any more details of the situation there?
Posted in Politics
17 Comments »
I really hope that people would sign those organ donation cards and keep it safe on their wallet.
My family respects that if i die, i want my body to be burned because why to **ll it should be buried to ground. And my wish is that every part of my body what still can be in good use and save someones life, can get that.
What i dont like is that rich people gets top of list because they give some money, or politics/famous peopel as well.
And now if prime minister is doing something so stupid that dosn’t respect dead humans “last wish”, something has gone wrong.
Mayby i hope that those who think that after someones dead, other person has last word what is happening to body, those would get sick so they would need liver transfer or similar. Mayby then they would understand that what is situation.
Okay, mayby they are right and mayby we should just stop all medicin development and helping everyone who just cant give big amount of $$$ (or £££). Yah, mayby we should be like U.S where human’s life isn’t valued higer than a rat if it ain’t a rich rat.
Comment by Fri13 — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 3:26 am
Organ donor myself.
..as if you need them when you’re dead. What a horrible waste. I approve.
Our nation should do the same thing.
(could you fix this typing form? It’s not fitted well to the frame it’s in.
looks like it’s this code…. here:
Comment by ethana2 — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 3:57 am
…it ate the html I pasted from page source. Go figure.
Man, I hope I can find time to start making KDE4 hello world apps with cmake…
My mind needs a better scheduler. Not randomly dropping threads would be a good start ^_^
Comment by ethana2 — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 4:02 am
250 in a maximum of 100? It sure looks farfetch.
Comment by K. Ralho — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 4:53 am
Taxes aren’t optional, although I know some politicians who seem to think otherwise.
Not an organ donor and not likely to be but I believe “those who are silent are in agreement” and opt-in makes a whole lot of sense. Avoiding unnecessary deaths is a very emotional way to try and appeal to people. To my mind the stronger point is stamping out the lucrative black market in organ trading.
One would think Gordon Brown is savvy enough not to put forward something like this if it didn’t stand a strong chance of getting through although from the article it looks like a longer term measure but it will be interesting to see how it goes.
Comment by Alan — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 6:17 am
Opt-out is unfair to those who without their knowledge or consent happen to be in, Opt-in is unfair to those who would’ve made it through life but didn’t since people seldom do more than what’s required of them.
a lot of people seem to think it’s ok to donate after death, but I personally must say that I would not want it to be opt-out. I would much rather prefer to make it a 1-3 day educational period after elementary school so that even though it is opt-in, choosing which to do should be so darn ordinary that noone should ever have to think about not doing it.
my 2 cents.
Comment by Jonas Lihnell — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 8:18 am
It depends much on _how_ you can opt-out. Will it be enough to carry a card saying that you opt-out, or will you need to fill a multipage form and submit it to every hospital in the area? Both are opt-out, just very different.
Comment by Lynoure Braakman — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 8:55 am
I’m a donor myself. I agree that this will save many lives.
But a good cause is not in itself a reason good enough to just take away something that is another persons property.
I put a very high value on peoples personal freedom. Therefore I think it is highly morally wrong to say “we’ll just help our selves unless you explicitly object in advance”.
Yes it is for a very good cause. But that doesn’t mean we should just ignore ethics and moral.
Instead of going the easy way and say “we’ll just take it, unless you explicityly object in advace”, they should work on making it very easy to chose to become a donor.
I think all people should be donors. But I think it should be their explicit choice.
Comment by Atle — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 9:25 am
Some interesting responses but I think I still stand where I did in the the post.
@Jonas: Obviously everyone opting in would be ideal but I don’t think it is realistic. People already get the chance when they apply for a driving license (which most adults do) and it is just ticking one box but yet many don’t.
@K.Ralho: You can INCREASE donation by more than 100%.
Personally I think if you couldn’t be bothered to opt-out then you should be eligible for transfer.
Comment by Mike — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 9:48 am
@ethana: Textarea should be fixed now.
Comment by Mike — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
If you distrust the state just a tiny bit, you can see where this could lead to some “interesting” situations.
Someone with a family member in dire need of an organ could very well profit from someone else’s death and that makes this system a bit dangerous.
I am Spanish and, as far as I know, the improvement in donation rates is simply due to better education about the importance of donating your organs and solidarity with other human beings. I could be wrong, but I have not read anywhere that donating is the default after one’s death.
Comment by ElAnonimo — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
I think it needs to be said that organ transplant is only possible in a very small percentage of cases, ie those where the brain is destroyed, but the rest of the body isn’t severely injured.
Needless to say that this doesn’t happen all that often, so anything that increases the number of possible donners is a good thing. A lot of transplants don”t happen, because the family just doesn’t know what the donner wanted. Changing Opt-in to Opt-out would solve these cases, and anyone who felt strongly could always put a note on their drivers licence.
David
P.S: Yes I’m a donner, and yes I have a card saying so.
Comment by David Mills — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Hi Mike,
We have an opt-out organ donor system in Belgium, with a optional registration of your preference. On a TV show just last night was said that Belgium is actually at the top of organ donor statistics. The number of healthy organs has declined in the last decade because of safer traffic, we used to have many young people die in weekend car accidents. A sad side-effect of a good thing.
If someone didn’t register their choice the family can decide what happens with the organs. It’s assumed to be negative when they can not be contacted. So people are encouraged to register their preference to prevent such situations. The TV show wanted more people to register and promised to report if their call-for-action had positive results.
I trust our medical professionals to do the right thing with the “harvested” organs. For instance, they stated that active drinkers or smokers will NEVER, get an organ transplant.
My girlfriend and I already decided to register as positive for organ donor.
Bart
Comment by Bart Cerneels — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
I would like to see an opt-out system, although being an atheist bordering agnostic, I am not sensitive to religous issues and can’t grasp why one would value religion (a best guess affair at best) above saving anothers life at no cost to one-self. That said I was brought up in a free thinking family and so can’t understand why one would choose a pre-organised religion (such as Christianity) above coming to personnal considered conclusions so social conditioning must be much stronger than I’ll ever know leading me to think that people who feel strongly will opt-out but those who are apathetic but want to do the right thing wouldn’t necessarily opt in making it the right way around. opt-out FTW.
Comment by Dave Taylor — Friday 18th January, 2008 @ 2:37 pm
Where I live we just have it on our drivers licence. Family shouldn’t be able to make YOUR choice for you.
Comment by Ben — Saturday 19th January, 2008 @ 12:53 am
I’ve been calling for this, with my girlfriend, who’s a doctor, for ages! Yay Brownie… now can you please f*ck off and die you tight-fisted scot? (okay think I got carried away…)
Comment by BenJam — Monday 21st January, 2008 @ 12:14 am
I’m with you 100%. I’m a donor and have a card but it was only recently I got it, after having thought from time to time for years that “Right, I should do that” and then forgetting it. I’m an atheist and don’t see how you could have any objections to what happens to your corpse.
Comment by Aron Stansvik — Monday 21st January, 2008 @ 7:04 am
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