A comment I left on a CiF piece about kidney transplants:
\”the issue certain CiFers here have with the Iranian system is possibly the additional payments a recipient can make, in addition to one made by the state – this for obvious reasons could inform a decision on who gets an organ. There is no mechanism in place to stop the highest bidder being awarded an organ – it\’s not a sound system.\”
Fair point…..but only if you\’re prepared to accept the corollaries of that point.
The Iranian system works…..they do not have a large group of people slowly dying on dialysis machines. They do not have a long waiting list for kidneys. The system is also hugely cheaper….transplants are cheaper than dialysis after about 18 months.
Now, if you want to say that a cheaper, better system, better in the sense that it is both cheaper and saves more lives, cannot be allowed to happen because of your ethical concerns about rich people being able to benefit from being rich, well, go right ahead.
I\’d just like you to go and make that case in a renal ward. Go explain it to someone dying because dialysis is no longer working and they\’re too far down the list to get a transplant. Lay out your ethical concerns to them. Tell them the truth, what you really believe.
They must die because you think it\’s icky if rich people get to live as well.
You could even take it further. Stand up at the funeral of one of those kidneyless patients. Tell the mourners that it is righteous and just that their loved one died so that your own conscience could be clear.
Then, if I might polititely suggest this, go and hang yourself out of shame that you would kill people in the name of your \”ethics\”.
I entirely reject the contention that you have the right to turn other people into corpses in order to salve your own conscience.
>>Then, if I might polititely suggest this, go and hang yourself out of shame that you would kill people in the name of your “ethics”.
…after having your kidneys removed first, natch.
I see CiF closed its comments.
Just immediately after Carl4Sparta contradicted himself in his last reply to you.
If you look at the Gerry Adams thread today and others over the weekend, it’s become apparent that comments that confront the general CiF mentality and make them uncomfortable are moved or threads closed down.
Comment is Free is rapidly becoming free, but only if you agree with the Guardianista view of the world.
“Liberalism is the doctrine that the moral comfort of the holder transcends all other considerations.”
(P.J. O’Rourke, I think, but I’ve been unable to find a source for it.)
GeoffH;
It was some time after I mentioned CiFers that the comments closed on the article, so it wasn’t that.
“I entirely reject the contention that you have the right to turn other people into corpses in order to salve your own conscience.” But persons of greenitude are devoted to that cause.
“I entirely reject the contention that you have the right to turn other people into corpses in order to salve your own conscience.”
It was a point I forgot to pick up on earlier. Should I understand this to mean the following: if we marketised organ donation in general we could stop “turn[ing] other people into corpses”?
Tim adds: My contention is that if we had a paid market for live donors of organs then fewer people would die waiting for organs. Yes.
Obviously this won’t work for hearts but it would for kidneys, livers and lungs (yes, live donation of those last two is indeed possible).
Tim, get your own comment box, it looks like I’ve said that.
Kidney donation may have increased in Iran when they introduced their initiative, but who is to say it will be transferable here? And who buys, the state? The individual? What do you link the market value of a kidney to?
Tim adds: Umm, you really don’t get markets do you? You set the price of a kidney at whatever it needs to be to get the number of people flogging them that you want. Supply and demand balanced by price….you know page three of every economics textbook?
There is already a market of sorts operating here, but not for NHS patients. Some of the organs donated by bereaved families, end up being transplanted into wealthy private patients, as part of a total package which can easily cost tens of thousands of pounds.
Another aspect is the total disrespect of the wishes of the late donor. In one case, a girl with a donor card had wanted her own ailing mother to receive her kidneys. When the girl met with a fatal accident, the organs were taken by the officials who denied them to the mother, “Its not our policy…”, and shortly after that, the mother died, still on the waiting list.
So folks, don’t carry a donor card. If you have one, tear it up. Let your family know your wishes, write it down for them. Signed and witnessed. Empower your next of kin.
Once commerce starts will not enterprising souls start havesting kidneys from non volunteers ( ie kidnapped MOPS who then get cut up) .
A promising sideline for your professional hitman.
“I entirely reject the contention that you have the right to turn other people into corpses in order to salve your own conscience.”
It is a shame to see Tim becoming such a Guardianista. After all, when there is famine in Africa, I think most people would agree that neither they nor the State have the right to walk into Tim’s home and take his TV to pay for food. If he wants to give money of his own accord and out of his own sense of morality, that is all well and good. But the State does not have the right to come and take money just because someone, somewhere, is dying.
Actions have consequences. The long term consequences of letting anyone who needs money take it are worse than the consequences of not doing so. I am utterly unconvinced that the long term consequences of selling organs are not greater than the problems of people dying on dialysis.
Even if it is not the case, TW needs to *think* about that and consider what the long term side effects are. God knows we have enough unintended consequences of well meaning policy to go around. He cannot ignore it.
But at least now we know how to deal with those patients who are too poor to afford a kidney under Tim’s scheme – they can break into his computer and trash his bank account. Pull out a gun and take his wallet. Fake his credit card details. Because, after all, we would not want a little thing like morality get in the way of avoiding corpses would we?