[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

Some countries are making organ donation an "opt out" policy. As in, if you don't specify that you don't want to donate, you are automatically an organ donor. I think a lot more places should be like this.

I have some serious criticism of this.


When an organization for prtecting the environment would access my bank account and bill 50 coins off my savings, and I confront them when finding out, they would not get away with "But you have not opted out in advance, so we think it is okay that we access your bank account and take your money". The money is no donation then, but loot. And they would be brought to court for being robbers.


Its the same with opt out organ donation schemes.


The death criterion over the past decades has been systematically altered, and always following demands from progressing medical options namely organ donations. Becasue fact is: organs taken form a really dead body cannot be used for trsnsplantation, the yhve to be taken from a body that is biologically still alive. And this life gets brought to an end in order to take its organs.



The death criterion based on brain activity is not safe, too, as a recent case form the uS has shown. A girl had fallen into coma years ago, still her body and her brain curves sometimes reacted to words spoken to her, and physical manipulations of her hands, body.


What s life, were does it end, were is death taking over? We more and more understand that it is no strict criterion at all, but a process that takes quite some longer time to complete.


State and others, society, have taken advantage of us all our life long. In many cases hey still will milk us for money after we "died", at leats in Germany were by law there is an obligation that you must be buried at a cemetery that gets paid for to and that taxed by the local community. In Germany it is not legal to take the ashes of you loved deceased ones home, the ymust be stored at a cemetery (that why some germans evade to the Netherlands in dfiance to the legal demands and where the laws are far more liberal). After a life full of getting mled on and on, it now is declared as natural that even in death you still must autmatically be taken advantage of?



Trust in the uncorrupted organisation of organ trade is not justified, many scandals over here have proven that.



Nobody here or elsewhere is to judge that this patient or old person now has to be brought to death for the benefit of another patient, just becasue the latter may be younger. Becareful with such underhanded arbitrary decision-making on life and death, you are dangerously close to very malicous terrain here: the claim for the total control of the individual usually is only made by dictatorships .



And again: the medical understanding of the dying process, is by far incomplete, and the death criterions have been opportunistically shifted in favour of the demands of advancing organ transplantation in past decades, repeatedly.


Nobody stops you to deicde for yourself. Set up a will and declare your inention, do so in advance. If you want to donate, do it, I do not stop you. But do not dare to make the body of a man the automatic property of the community in the name of an arbitrarily defind higher cause. I go even so far to say that those who want an opt-out model for organ donation have ni call anymore for opposing the detah penalty at the same time for mroal reasons.


Moral demands the unprovoked voluntary decision for self-sacrifice or early-dying by the affected donor.


It is also this automatism that some people want that ahs made me an ardent opponent of organ transplatation in general. Pltiics must teach us that you always have to expect the worst from politics and political manipulation. But here, once again people'S heart open up in joy just becasue another claim is made that it all is "for something good"? I say: this all allows both for abuse, and for massive commercial corruption. it already happens, we alreayc have hgad quite many eamples. If you think that opt out is the way to go, you demonstrate an attitude of wanting to rule over not ciotizensm but just subjects that is not different to that the Chiense state for exampel demnstrates towards its subjects in China.



A donation is not mandatory, and beign able to opt out does not make it a donation wher ein fact it is an obligation then (from which you can opt out).



The only thing I totally agre eon is that people who do not want to dinate at the end of their life, shall not have a claim to prfit from organ donatiosn themselves. But then, you need to make a decision early in your life here, and youth and the limited mindspan and different worldview that brings, holds its own complicaitons of this matter.


No automatisms here, no opt out. Keep donating voluntary from all beginning on, to all end. Nobody, neither young nor old, has any claim for that somebody else has to live and die for ones own benefit.


Altruism as a mandatory duty? No thanks.



I carry a card in my wallet, it says that I do not donate organs in case fate strikes me and takes me out and I cannot voice my will anymore, it also says: I do not want to be given organs. However, I am close to the family of a girlfriend I know since long. If her daughters would be in need, i would volunteer to get tested wether my biology is compatible with theirs, and then would will to donate a kidney, or bone marrow. And under certain conditions I could imagine to go even further than this. But you see, I reserve the right to chose on the when, what and for whom. And whether these factors are up to the views of some strangers, is compeltely uninteresting for me.



I oppose the generalisation and automatism and the official strawman story about death criterions and the goodness of donating. That arbitrary medicla opprtnism has so ver ymuch to do with all thsi is clear for anyone who takes the time and investigates the matter ver the past 40 years a bit deeper. And when human life becomes an opportune ressource, I start to be alarmed.


Leave it voluntary. Leave it to opt in. Opt out is not donating, bur force.



That the inventors of nudging could even win a Nobel prize for this, will allways be beyond me.It sounds more appropriate to throw them into jail.


In China, the state can decide that this or that prisoner can be turned into a volunteer organ donator. Thats the logical next step if you will opt in. The state already did so and does so in other areas as well: obligatory draft for the military , mandatory social "volunteer years", and always it gets given a positive twist. But its always about the total availability of the subject owned by the state, the higher good, a higher cause, the common interest.


Beware.