Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, April 22, 2008 7:51:11 PM
Once again,
Greg England's blog has inspired a post. He should probably start demanding a percentage from me. Actually, out of the kindness of my heart, I will beat him to it, and offer him a full 15% of my blogging revenue. I believe that comes to $0. What is that in pounds?
Anyway, he
mentioned a US rule on organ donation that said a donor could specify an individual, but not specify donation to anyone of a specific race or religion. His point was that this was superior to the model in the UK, while I am about to argue that, though better than the UK, it is still wrong.
Of course I am sure some readers will wonder why I would object. We have become so sensitive to the possibility of racism that we do not look at the common sense effects.
Let us look at it this way. Suppose a donor will give away his heart, but he wants it to go only to a white man. As that is not allowed, his organ goes to the grave with him. Now, let us suppose that we do allow that donation. The organ goes to a white man, true, but that white man now does not require one of the organs which can go to anyone. So, the organ that is no longer needed may save the life of a black, and Asian, or another white. In short, even though
HIS organ will only save a white, the organ it frees up may save anyone.
In other words, this policy may be killing blacks (or anyone else) in order to prevent racism. But I somehow doubt the black man who dies because of that one less heart will feel better that racism was not allowed.
It is similar when it comes to the sale of organs. While we allow the hospital to charge for the procedure, allow the doctors, the nurses, and everyone else to charge a fee, for some reason it would "taint" the procedure to allow the organ donor to be paid.
Of course the argument is that some rich person would buy an organ and "skip ahead" in the line. But the reality is that, should that rich person "buy" an organ that would not be donated otherwise, then that means one less free organ is required and another life can be saved.
Again, I doubt the person who dies because of the ban on selling organs feels any better that fairness has been preserved.
And that is my problem with the entire organ donation system. By refusing to allow organs to be treated as property, we are killing people. Yes, we are preventing "racist" or "biased" donations, and we are prevent rich from "unfairly" buying organs, and people can feel good about maintaining their high ideals, but the truth of the matter is that those ideals are killing very real people who could otherwise be saved.
When it comes to ideals, I place saving a life above both fairness and racial equality.
TO CLARIFY (04/22/2008)
As I was apparently not completely clear, I will explain something I said above:
If we do not allow a racist to donate a heart because he specifies it should only go to a white man, then that white man must get an "undedicated" heart from UNOS.
If we allow the racist donation, then that white man will not need the heart from UNOS, and the UNOS heart can then go to anyone.
That was what I meant to say when I spoke of the racially specific donation freeing up an additional heart. I thought I was clear, but as a reader did not understand my point, it is likely I was not as clear as I thought.
Oh, and for those who share my inability to recall what acronyms mean, UNOS is the United Network for Organ Sharing.