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.
In Germany what you describe won’t be possible: organ donation from a living donor is only allowed if both person are quite close to each other (partners, family and so on). Organ donation from dead people is anonymous: the doctors that take the organs out of the dead person doesn’t know who receives them. Only Eurotransplant knows.
I think that’s a very good system. Organs should be given and received as anonymous as possible.
So you guys don’t do domino kidney donations? This is something that is sometimes done in the US. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20199504/.
No, we don’t have that here in Germany.
Are you sure Germany doesn’t have an altruistic kidney donation program?
This document from 2016 agrees with this assertion (bottom of second page).
It seems such a waste, this podcast makes it sound an amazing idea https://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-me-a-match-update/
From the paper:
The legal basis for a living donation in Germany is a relationship or close personal connection between donor and recipient.
You’re donating an organ, or you’re not.
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I disagree with you, but gave you an upvote for sharing your opinion.
That is literally the opposite of being altruistic, so no.
No, if it became a tool of power it would cease to be an altruistic donation
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I’ve heard of “Short-term utilitarianism”, but I like yours better.
No.
If you’re alive then you’re totally be within your rights to choose who to voluntarily help or donate something to. Don’t like the look of that homeless guy for whatever reason? Don’t give them money. You can be as racist or misogynistic or otherwise generally cunty as you like, and as long as it’s your personal money/time/organs and you keep quiet about your selection criteria you’re unlikely to have a problem.
However once you’re dead, if you want your dickish restrictions honoured then you have to write them down somewhere. And any organisation set up to manage organ donations that agrees to facilitate such restrictions is likely to find themselves on the pointy end of a discrimination lawsuit at some point.
The question here is about a voluntary kidney donation from a living patient.
What conditions are you imagining in which a donor is living but not aware of specifically who would be receiving the organ before agreeing? Tests need to be done to ensure compatibility, and a kidney is a lot to ask and probably wouldn’t be agreed to unless it helps a loved one.
I feel like this is a strange premise whose goal is trying to try to move the line little by little until people are willing to say they’re a little bit racist/sexist. Or until people are willing to admit they don’t think others should have control over decisions made about their bodies. Be honest about your ends here instead of dreaming up fictions that make so little sense the answers are unproductive.
Then I think you can nominate a specific person for whatever reason you want, but if it’s for racist/etc reasons you better keep it to yourself if you don’t want backlash.
In practical terms it’s very normal for people to only donate a kidney because they have a specific recipient in mind.
Trying to say no, “you can not donate your kidney only to your son, you have to make the kidney available to everyone” does not make sense.
If you are running an anonymous donation facility then practicality comes into play. How realistic is it to keep tabs on all kinds of weird preferences? Matches are already hard enough. And how do you disclose responsibly?
From an ethical point of view you need to look at the big picture. It is not enough to say that this is a kidney that someone will get but would not if you don’t allow discrimination. You have to also think about whether such a policy will encourage people specifying who otherwise wouldn’t. And then a growing imbalance in recipients.
I think if you volunteer as an organ donor, you waive ownership of your bodyparts and leave it to doctors to asses who needs it most.
Certainly not.
Excellent question. I have to put myself in their shoes. I don’t want my kidneys going to… a member of the North Korean dictatorship, or the CCP. Or any of the elite in Dubai. I don’t see anything wrong with my preferences there, so we would have to allow people to discriminate indiscriminately. I guess I would have to be in favour. There are people that I think are more deserving than others. Jeffery Dahmer isn’t getting my organs.
We’ve decided long ago that bad people surviving is better than good people dying.
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
I do not understand the concept of “deserving to live.” I did nothing to deserve life; it was given to me before I could do anything. Some people think that people can forfeit their “right to life” by their actions, but how can someone forfeit a right they never acquired?
I understand killing for practical reasons, in some cases, but claiming that everyone is born with a right to life that can be taken away is incoherent,
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TBH I’d rather donate to a serial killer that can realistically harm a dozen of people at most, than a person willfully supporting a global child molestation ring harming thousands annually and holding back the society for centuries.
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A 10-year-old isn’t a willful supporter of these causes.
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.
Compulsory is a bit much, but an opt-out system would be a good solution.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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It’s still my body.
You wouldn’t condone necrophilia I’m guessing?
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If you respect someone when they are alive you should respect them in death too. Only a troll would say they’re okay with people fucking their own dead mothers or mocking dead political enemies.
Guess I better hang my “Irish need not apply” sign on my kidneys now just in case
They should be allowed to restrict their donation, but I think the health service should be allowed to overrule this necessary (if you’re the only compatible donor or something, idk how this stuff works).
Maybe don’t make it very obvious that this possibility exists so people will donate thinking their restriction is final. After all, what are they gonna do about it after their dead?
This is the only opinion so far that I completely disagree with. I don’t think a system that is trying to get people to volunteraly donate their organs should be allowed to lie to donors.
Yeah I understand completely honestly.
Though I don’t mind lying to assholes who will only donate their organs to specific groups of people, the backlash and lack of trust this could cause could have disastrous effects.
I didn’t really think this through.
Women, no. Gingers, yes. Jews, no.
Being ginger is not a protected class, so there is no legal restriction on descriminating (so long as you don’t successfully argue that gingers are a race, eg Scottish, but that’s a stretch).
However morally no, you shouldn’t have a say in it. Either way, usually you’ll be dead when the decision is made. Maybe not with kidneys, although with kidneys you tend to know who you’re giving it to - I don’t think anyone just randomly donates a kidney, like you would give blood.
I don’t think anyone just randomly donates a kidney, like you would give blood
You would be wrong about that, in 2021 more than 450 people in the US anonymously donated a kidney to a non-familiy member (source). This is the scenario I’m asking about. One of the arguments given is that just as we allow monetary donations to specific groups of people, why not organs.
I think the conditions of anonymously giving it away would preclude the ability to discriminate. You’ll likely have to sign something saying as much.
This is the scenario I’m asking about.
Nobody knew your scenario before you explained it in detail. It is simply not happening.
Organisations don’t want to be bothered with such restrictions from a donor. Their principles are: fair and anonymous. It is hard enough already this way.
Nobody knew your scenario before you explained it in detail.
I thought that “altruistic organ donor” was a well understood concept, I was wrong.
It is simply not happening.
You’re factually wrong on that aspect.
I was wrong
So, what does it tell you?
You’re factually wrong on that aspect.
Because of 450 cases in some foreign country? Don’t be ridiculous.
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