A report into organ donation ordered by Gordon Brown will not recommend a system of presumed consent.
There is no possible version of a civilised society in which the default assumption is that your body belongs either to the State or to the society. As Mill pointed out, if you don\’t own your own body you are a slave.
Every year more than 400 people die while waiting for donor organs, mainly kidneys.
And we know how to deal with that, the kidney part at least. Accept that people do own their own bodies and allow them to sell them. This is the system in Iran and no, it isn\’t a coincidence that Iran is the only country in the world without a shortage of kidneys for transplant.
Some things are just too important for us not to enforce property rights and the subsequent markets in the distribution of that property.
And of course VAT would apply – sounds like a win-win Gordon?
To what extent is there a “you” to own anything, including your corpse, after you are dead?
If you are dead, presumably they wouldn’t want your kidneys.
Dead kidneys are only good for a pie. If your kidneys are still alive, then presumably so are you – to some extent?
Peter and Potarto. I’m sorry that’s utter bollocks. My body is mine while I’m alive as are my possessions.
When I die I get to choose what happens to all my posessions, INCLUDING MY BODY. If I want it buried, burnt, fed to lions in Africa, chopped up and distributed, thats MY DECISION.
Or would you suggest that the deceased have no right to decide what happens to what they’ve worked a lifetime for? (If you think this is the case then I think you are an unspeakable cunt).
Z.
I continue to believe that people who opt in to organ donation schemes should be given first preference if they themselves need an organ in future.
If the public are not allowed to profit from the sale of organs, how come the hospitals can do it?
It has already happened. I think it was Addenbrooks who recently applied for , and reserved, NHS donor organs and used some of them for transplantation into their private patients from the Persian Gulf, for whom money is no object. Their defence was that this is legal. Those organs would otherwise have gone to NHS patients.
And then there was the recent tragic case of a young girl who died in a road accident. Her organs were duly harvested and given to NHS patients. But her own Mother, who was in dire need of a transplant was deliberately excluded from this because it is “not our policy” to prioritise closely related kinfolk. That girl carried a donor card purely because of her Mother’s predicament.
When I pop my cloggs, there will be an opt-out document which places my family in absolute control. Their own needs come first, for any prime cuts of Monty.
Then NHS patients come next. What is free from me is to be free to them. We had a deal from before I was even born.
After that, my executors can deal with the giblets as they see fit.
But if the hospital won’t go along with my wishes, my entire unlovely person is going into the crem. And I am even taking my paintbrushes with me. So it’s my way or nothing.
The medical profession have set up this donor register, and they are pushing us to carry these cards, so they won’t “have to” persecute our next of kin for our spare parts, without mentioning that they are either puttting us up on e-bay, or making sure that our own offspring are banned from any benefit.
Creeps.
Say no. Opt out.
The other thing that bothers me about this is the opt-out requirement has to be signified. How?
Do we have to get tattooed to make sure? If so, where? And why the hell should we?
Strikes me, it is a deliberate mechanism for supporting the body snatchers when they say “Ooops- sorry Missus we didn’t know he’d opted out, and it’s too late now”.
No. Don’t give them anything. Make them steal it, then catch them doing it, then put all the details on the web.