Are you an organ donor?

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Are you an organ donor?

Yes
39
70%
No
15
27%
No but this thread convinced me to become one immediately.
2
4%
 
Total votes : 56

Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby blehblah » Sat Dec 05, 2015 5:49 pm

I am an organ donor, but I admit to being squeamish about going whole-hog and donating my entire body.

Anyhow - it's pretty simple. I'm done with it, so have at it. Even after decades of self-abuse, there's probably something or other that could help someone else. It's surprising what they need. We tend to focus on the big bits - heart, liver, penis (hey, for someone with no penis, mine would be an upgrade) but there are plenty of weird little things they also need.

If people are squeamish about everything, I don't really have a problem with it. I would never promote a tit-for-tat system (if you don't agree to donate, you're off recipient lists). I do support opt-out, though, or at least making giving an answer mandatory and binding (see below). One of the near-universal truths of humanity is that we are lazy as all get-out, unless motivated by an external force. Imagine a country where everyone would have to automatically serve two years in the army unless they opted-out.

Attaching the organ donation question to a drivers license is an attempt at making it universal (and a bit morbid, when you think about it - "Here's your motorcycle license, and you really, like really-really, should fill-out this card"). Perhaps it could be a part of something that is renewed more often, and even more universal. Let's say in Canada, you don't get a health card unless a response is provided. Income tax filings might also work (as inevitable as death, as the saying goes).

Where I live, it also depends on the family. When one is near death, there are various conversations between the medical people and the family. One is about organ donation. It really doesn't matter what the patient wanted, though if it's a "yes", that can help guide the family. Families may also have heard the wishes of the patient before (I have communicated mine), but feel differently when it's crunch time. Even the most gung-ho family may hesitate when it comes to children - and yes, children need transplants.

Finally, a couple random thoughts. If you don't wish to donate, but you do wish to be cremated, I think you're a bit weird. I can't express exactly why, but in my fickle mind, it doesn't make sense. If you want to be like Tutankhamun or Ramses and show the world your smile long after your death, know that the nice people who mummified them emptied them - including sucking the brain through the nose - to get that certain je ne sais quoi of not rotting. If you want to really do it right, you're going to have to find the right bog or glacier to work with.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat Dec 05, 2015 6:38 pm

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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Cordslash » Sat Dec 05, 2015 7:35 pm

NotCIAAgent wrote:I am not for two reasons.

1 - Paranoia. What if I can be saved and they let me die just to harvest my guts?

2 - Brazil. My opinion doesn't matter shit, my living relatives are the ones who will decide if my organs will be donated or not in case of death, and the legal default is "no". Having a donor card means only I would consent to having them harvested, but have no legal weight.

Quite ironic, given how many people die in this country every year. We could be the world's organ farm if we forced everyone to donate.


Newsflash: your country, and pretty much your continent, already are the the world's organ farm. Just last year there was a huge story here about South American people selling their organs to well-to-do Europeans. And of course they had the surgery done in South Africa so as not to draw suspicion.
Suspicion was drawn and hundreds of receivers were involved, not mentioning one of our largest private health companies.

EDIT: Oh my continent is in the same boat, being living crops for organ harvesters. It just seems like South America is preferable.

And now we've been taken into a dark place.

Sorry.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby blehblah » Sat Dec 05, 2015 7:54 pm

ghijkmnop wrote:Who knows? This may all be moot in 20 years anyway, with 3D tissue printing and Chinese cloning factories.


Those are a bit far-off.

But then, who know?

My prediction is neither 3-D tissue printing nor cloning factories will produce the complex bits that are needed. I don't see a kidney or heart coming out of the 3-D shop within 20- years. Parts of each, perhaps, but even that is a stretch. An inner ear? A heart valve? Not soon...
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Qinglong » Sat Dec 05, 2015 9:11 pm

Not all organ donation is voluntary.

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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat Dec 05, 2015 9:49 pm

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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby reallifegirl » Wed Dec 09, 2015 3:29 am

I am currently and so long as I'm on my current path, I'll remain one.

I have poked my nose around the idea of cryogen freezing after death, though, and if I ever head back that way I may have to change my status. But for now, assuming I don't go for putting my corpse in a nitrogen tank, then I'm donating all the way.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Tesseracts » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:49 am

reallifegirl wrote:I am currently and so long as I'm on my current path, I'll remain one.

I have poked my nose around the idea of cryogen freezing after death, though, and if I ever head back that way I may have to change my status. But for now, assuming I don't go for putting my corpse in a nitrogen tank, then I'm donating all the way.

Interesting idea, but if future technology can bring me back from frozen, maybe it's advanced enough that I'll only really need my brain.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby reallifegirl » Wed Dec 09, 2015 4:50 am

Tesseracts wrote:
reallifegirl wrote:I am currently and so long as I'm on my current path, I'll remain one.

I have poked my nose around the idea of cryogen freezing after death, though, and if I ever head back that way I may have to change my status. But for now, assuming I don't go for putting my corpse in a nitrogen tank, then I'm donating all the way.

Interesting idea, but if future technology can bring me back from frozen, maybe it's advanced enough that I'll only really need my brain.


As I understand it, that's what some companies (particularly Alcor) want to be able to do, but they provide the option of freezing your whole body in case there's other parts that it turns out they need. But you can choose to freeze only your head instead of paying for the whole thing.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby ghijkmnop » Wed Dec 09, 2015 5:32 am

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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby reallifegirl » Wed Dec 09, 2015 3:11 pm

ghijkmnop wrote:Of course television crime dramas have taught me that Cryonic companies talk you into freezing your whole body so they can harvest your organs and place your head with a dozen other heads in a single container while charging for 13 of them AND selling the organs.


I think Alcor, the biggest cryonic company currently existing, tries to dispel those fears by letting people tour the facilities (including the 'Patient Care Facilities') just to see what they're signing up for. (I really did do a bunch of research on this, I went through a big mortality kick about a year ago.)
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Marcuse » Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:45 pm

NECROMANCYYY
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42282409

The NHS in England is beginning a consultation on the possibility of introducing "opt-out" organ donation. Wales already has it, but it's too early to make a decision on whether it's changed anything.

Interesting to note that the former head of UK transplant services thinks all the evidence he's seen has suggests it will either have no impact or will harm donation rates. In Wales a significant minority of the population has opted out (about 205,000 people). The suggestion has been that the only way opt-out donation would increase rates is if families also have no right to restrict donation, otherwise they block it in 30-35% of cases, which has been stubbornly consistent. If so then the consultation on opt-out donation needs to have a clear discussion about the rational basis for refusing to allow families to communicate the wishes of a deceased person if they didn't officially opt-out, and the reason why the government thinks that they have the right to override these wishes and consent in general.

I will say, where I work and in my every experience, this seems abhorrent. It's saying to people that they're presumed to consent until they go out of their way to inform the government that they do not. Already there's calls for those people's access to medical treatment to be restricted in response, as though not complying with the opt-out scheme's presumed consent should carry a punishment. I don't know where this would leave people of faith, or people who're concerned about their right to bodily autonomy and the disposal of their remains after death, because while the suggestion isn't something that's being proposed, it seems to be such a go-to cry from supporters of opt-out that I could see it being politically viable given enough support.

For reference, there's roughly 6000 people on the transplant list in the UK, and of them 450 die before finding a donor. By contrast, there's around 23.6 million registered donors in the opt-in system we have now. I don't know if switching to opt-out would actually change the inability of doctors to find a matching organ, and I don't wonder if our resources might be better spent in trying to find different solutions to organ failure that mean we don't have to rely on donation and its associated risks.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Tesseracts » Tue Dec 12, 2017 7:02 pm

I don't see this as an issue of consent. As Avi pointed out earlier, we already have rather restricted legal right to consent to what happens to our bodies after death. If I don't specify what I want to happen with my body, it will most likely be filled with formaldehyde, dressed up, and placed in an open casket where people can look at my dead face caked with unnatural looking makeup. I find this more invasive than organ removal and frankly creepier, but this is done to people without their explicit consent all the time.

I also don't understand why you're concerned about consent but you think it's fine for families to make these decisions for the dead person.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Marcuse » Tue Dec 12, 2017 8:54 pm

I find this more invasive than organ removal and frankly creepier, but this is done to people without their explicit consent all the time.


The fact that you find an open casket funeral more invasive than literally being chopped up for parts speaks a lot about your view, but I don't think it reflects any bearing on the question of consent. I'm not the person introducing the concept of consent to it, the people who propose this frame this as the giving of consent by still living people to the use of their bodies. In any other debate, we would probably all fall on the side of individuals having ownership of their bodies and being able to make a decision about it.

As Avi pointed out earlier, we already have rather restricted legal right to consent to what happens to our bodies after death.


There's a world of difference between being restricted in what one can consent to, and someone else assuming your consent to something if you've not said anything. I can't overstate the backwards nature of assuming someone consents to something at all. There's no justification for it, and in literally any other field of medicine or personal interaction it would be completely unacceptable. We're not presuming the consent of the dead, we're presuming the consent of living people, which has its own problems and issues.
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Re: Are you an organ donor?

Postby Learned Nand » Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:47 pm

I am not fully following your argument, 'Cuse. Which living person's consent are we assuming when we harvest organs in an opt-out system?
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