Should you be allowed to sell your organs? How does this relate to your stance on health care

[dammitgibs]

Originally posted by: piasabird
Some countries like China have sold prisoner's organs for money to make a profit.

Maybe we could make death row prisoners organs belong to the state? Actually after typing that out it gives me a creepy feeling

 

[simpletron]

Originally posted by: daishi5

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
It is sad that one would consider doing this, but it the said person's body. Although incidents of clandestine organ harvests would undoubtedly skyrocket.

Ok, I have to ask, because this is brought up as well. How in the hell do you do a clandestine organ harvesting? Do you think hospitals will accept an organ that some guy hauls in an igloo cooler? Do you think that our current hospitals will work on patients that have been tied up and drug in? And all of this assumes that the guy you just shanghaied is compatible with the person purchasing the organ.

Edit: I don't mean to be rude, but those urban legends about waking up in a tub full of ice are an urban legend.

this was my question until i realize that some doctors are corruptable for a high enough price. you could have someone kidnap the donor, and sneak them into the hospital at night. then have a corrupt doctor harvest the organs, and puts in dummy paperwork so that the kidnapper gets paid. then the kidnapper pays off the doctor. all the harvestable organs would be worth well over 100K/person, so 1 person/month would lead to an easy 500K+/year for each. so as long as they could stay under the radar, both the kidnapper and doctor would be raking it in.

I don't think it would be widespread as others think, but there would be some just because of the high potential rewards.

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: Craig234
There's a wide variety of policies that fall under the category of when povety is excessive, the tradeoff between the acts of the poor tomake money that are bad for them being exploitave, versus the desire to let them get money *somehow*. The real problem is the underlying massive poverty that makes the people interested in doing whatever the harmful/degrading/etc. act is (most prostitution falls into the same category, for example, creating problems that drugs 'help' address, leading to the need for money to buy drugs...)

In short, most societies recognize that allowing the harm to people because of the poverty is wrong; sadly not enough do enough to try to address the poverty.

I vote 'no', and IMO the people who follow some misguided Libertarian ideology to vote yet are not appreciating the moral issue involved, but are fixated on narrow 'freedom'.

These people are not going to have much understanding of the lack of freedom that the poor suffer from th eeconomic situation, how selling their organs is not freedom but prison.

Instead of fighting for one more victory for their Libertarian ideas, they'd be much better off to try to understand what effectively reduces poverty.

Shockingly, my feelings echo those of Craig's - I say no.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
We have a paradox in our philosophical system. We are free to do harm to ourselves. This is because we do not tie freedom to responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is insanity. We live in an insane system.

The answer clearly is that for those who cannot actually make responsible decisions they should be made for them by people who can. Who are these people who can? If you don't know you are not one of them.

A person who harms himself harms me.

You say that if you don't know you are not one of them. Who then is without sin to cast the first stone, may I ask?

Would you pull a blind man off a street that a lion had escaped a cage and was roaming on? I wasn't talking about throwing stones but catching one that had been thrown to keep it from hitting somebody, no? We accept that parents can control their children and we know that some adults aren't.

Freedom is absolute only when responsibility is also. I can't accept a purely theoretical answer to a problem that creates such moral dilemmas. I am my brother's keeper.

 

[Elias824]

It encourages people to destroy their body for money, the poor would be in an epically bad position and I don't really think we should put them in the position of having to trade their body away for cash. We do have a large defect of organs for replacement but there are other things we can do to aid in fixing that short of forcing people to sell themselves for cash. I must say give a big NO for this one, far to many moral issues involved and far to many people can be hurt by it. That coming from a libertarian, we can have morals and freedom.