An extreme version of this is: What should the German health service do if someone says they are willing to donate a kidney as long as it doesn’t go to a Jew?

On the one hand, nobody is forced to donate a kidney and by forbidding this we’re making things worse for an innocent patient. On the other hand, it can be seen as the state sanctioning this kind of discrimination.

  • CrimeDad
    8•1 year ago

    No. Organ “donation” after death should be compulsory. For living donors there should be a publicly funded bounty system where you either take the money or not. Donors and recipients don’t get to be picky.

    • fearout
      2•1 year ago

      Compulsory is a bit much, but an opt-out system would be a good solution.

      • CrimeDadEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Hmmm okay, but it has to be difficult to opt-out, kind of like how conscientious objectors have to go through a whole process to get out of military service.

        • @philluminati@lemmy.ml
          2•1 year ago

          Why shouldn’t people be able to opt out? I opted out. This is my body not yours. We’re not all in this together.

          • CrimeDad
            2•1 year ago

            Because living people who are sick might need those organs, which would otherwise just go to waste in your corpse. Also, it good to have a steady supply of organs from the deceased in order to avoid perverse and exploitative market situations.

            • @philluminati@lemmy.ml
              2•1 year ago

              The very fact you raise the possibility of perverse or exploitative markets means there’s cause for mistrust in any donor arrangement. We live in a capitalist world and here you are devaluing my body for who, some CEO? Lisa Marie Presley inherits a catalogue of copyrighted content and revenue streams but my family can’t get a penny for saving someone’s life?

              Organ donation is a wonderful thing and I understand why our systems are “opt-in” by default but why can’t I opt out, if I don’t trust society?

              (Also: https://i.redd.it/9fiy6yw00mcb1.png)

              • CrimeDad
                1•1 year ago

                You’re kind of talking about different things. Copyright should of course be abolished along with all private property. I don’t rule out compensation to your estate for organs harvested after death and there should definitely be a public bounty/reward system to encourage the living to donate.

                You shouldn’t be able to opt out, or at least it should be very difficult to do so, because when you are dead what you have a say in that affects the living should be very limited, because those organs won’t matter to you anymore, and because those organs might matter very much to living people. Whether you trust society or not doesn’t matter anymore when you are dead.